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LIBRARY 


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FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 

ARTHUR  WILLIAM  RILEY 

I  897-19 }6 

Lecturer  in  English  in  Columbia  University 

and  Coach  of  debating  in  Columbia  College 

1921-1956 


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THE    FIRST    MEETING    OF    DANTE    AND    BEATRICl 

BY 

HKNRY    HOLIDAY 


^^^AT/M^^ 


AND  FAMOUS 


niid 


THE  LIVC50rA\OPETnAn-200 

OF-TnE-A\05TPP0AmEnT-  per: 
5oriAGE5 •  in  •  niSTOpy  .v;  i*?  it  ^s 


EDITED  by 
CriAPLESFnOPNE 


NEW-YOPK:  SELMAPIIESS  PUBLISriEP^t^ 


1  ^      «    • 

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Copyright,   1894,  by 
Selmab   Hess 


32,0 
HIS  3 


4- 


CONTENTS   OF   VOLUME   IV. 


SUBJECT                                                                                                       AUTHOR  PAGE 

MICHAEL  ANGELO, Anna  Jameson, 214 

BEETHOVEN, C.  E.  Bourne, 319 

SARAH    BERNHARDT, H.  S.  Edwards, 382 

ROSA  BONHEUR, Clarence  Cook, 276 

EDWIN  BOOTH, Clarence  Cook, 370 

ROBERT    BROWNING, I9I 

WILLIAM  CULLEN   BRYANT, Richard  Hcnry  Stoddard, 148 

JOHN  BUNYAN, John  GreenleaJ  Whittier, 66 

ROBERT    BURNS Will  Carlcton, 112 

THOMAS  CARLYLE, W.  Wallace, 154 

Letter  from  Carlyle  on  the  "  Choice  0/  a  Profession," 161 

CERVANTES, Joscph  Forster, 39 

THOMAS  CHATTERTON, Colonel  Richard  Malcolm  Johnston 107 

GEOFFREY  CHAUCER, Alice  King, 29 

JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER, President  Charles  F.  Thwing, 144 

CHARLOTTE   CUSHMAN, Dutton  Cook 355 

Letter  from  Aliss  Cushman  to  a  young  friend  on  the  subject  of  ^^  Self -conquest" 362 

DANTE, 4rchdcacon  Farrar,  D.D.,  F.R.S. 19 

LEONARDO  DA  VINCI, Inna  Jameson 209 

DANIEL  DE  FOE, Clark  Russell, 72 

CHARLES  DICKENS, Walter  Besant, 186 

GUSTAVE  DOR^, Kenyan  Cox, 298 

ALBERT    DURER, W .  J .  Jlollond, 23 1 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON, Moncure  D.  Conway, i66 

Letter  from  Emerson  to  his  child  on  the  subject  of '■'^  Health" ■     •  '73 

EDWIN   FORREST, Lawrence  Barrett 349 

DAVID  GARRICK, Samuel  Archer, 343 

GfiROME, Clarence  Cook, 281 

GOETHE, Rei'.  Edward  Everett  LLale 122 

HANDEL, C.  E.  Bourne 302 

HAYDN C.  E.  Bourne, 315 

WILLIAM    HOGARTH, *47 

OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES Francis  H.  Underwood, 196 

HOMER, William  Ewart  Gladstone, i 

Vol.  IV  or 4  Vol.  Ed.  iii 


iv  CONTENTS    OF   VOLUME    I\^ 

SUBJF.CT                                                                                                                AUTHOR  PAGE 

HORACE, /.IF.  Mackail, i6 

VICTOR  HUGO, Margaret  O.  IV.  Oliphant, i6i 

WASHINGTON    IRVING, 14° 

JOSEPH  JEFFERSON, Clarence  Cook, 374 

SAMUEL  JOHNSON, Lord  Macaithiy, 99 

FRANZ  LISZT, Rev.  Hugh  R.  Haweis,  M.A., 332 

HENRY  WADSWORTH  LONGFELLOW,    ....     Hezekiah  Butterwortlt, 174 

MEISSONIER, Clarence  Cook., 272 

MENDELSSOHN, C.  E.  Boiime, 326 

JEAN  FRANCOIS  MILLET, Clarence  Cook, 265 

JOHN    MILTON, 6o 

MOLIERE, Sir  Walter  Scott, 50 

MOZART, .     .     .     C.  E.  Bourne, 308 

PAGANINI, 325 

ADELINA   PATTI, Frederick  F.  Buffen, 37S 

PETRARCH, .' Alice  King, 25 

PHIDIAS, Clarence  Cook, 203 

PLATO, George  Grote,  F.R.S., 7 

ALEXANDER  POPE, Austin  Dobson, 82 

RACHEL, Button  Cook, 363 

RAPHAEL, Mrs.  Lee, 221 

REMBRANDT, Elizabeth  Robins  Pennell, 240 

SIR  JOSHUA  REYNOLDS, Samuel  Archer, 250 

DANTE    GABRIEL    ROSSETTI, Edmund  GoSSe, 287 

RUBEN'S, Mrs.  Lee, 236 

SCHILLER,    .............     i?.  Z.  Farjcon, 116 

SIR  WALTER  SCOTT, \V.  C.  Taylor,  LL.D.,   .     .     .     .     .     .     .     .  130 

Letter  of  advice  from  Scott  to  his  son, 135 

WILLIAM  SHAKESPEARE, Senator  John  J.  Lngalls 44 

DEAN  SWIFT, Samuel  Archer, 77 

TORQUATO    TASSO, 34 

ALFRED  TENNYSON, Clarence  Cook, 182 

THORWALDSEN, Llaus  Christian  Andersen 258 

TITIAN, Giorgio  Fasari, 226 

GIUSEPPE    VERDI, 342 

VIRGIL, 12 

VOLTAIRE, M.  C.  Lock-wood,  D.D., 92 

RICHARD  WAGNER, Franklin  Peterson,  Afus.  Bac 338 

BENJAMIN  WEST, Alartlia  J.  Lamb 254 

WILLIAM    WORDSWORTH 1 36 


Vol.  IV  of  4  Vol.  Ed. 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


VOLUME   IV. 


PHOTOGR.AVURES 

TO  PACK 

ILLUSTRATION                                                                                                    ARTIST  PAGE 

THE  FIRST  iMEETiNG   OF  DANTE  AND  BEATRICE,    .     .     .  Hciuy  Holiday  Frontispiece 

PETRARCH  AND  LAURA  INTRODUCED  TO  THE  EMPEROR 

AT  AVIGNON, Vacslav  Brozik  28 

A    DINNER    AT    THE    HOUSE    OF    MOLIERE    AT    AUTEUIL,      .  GeOrgeS-GastOll  M'elillgUe  58 
THE    ARREST     OF     VOLTAIRE     AND     HIS    NIECE     BY     FRED- 
ERICK'S ORDER, Jules  Giranlet  96 

VICTOR  HUGO, From  life  162 

LONGFELLOW'S  STUDY, From  photograph  17S 

MICHAEL  ANGELO  AND  viTTORiA  COLONNA,      ....  Hermann  Schneider  220 

ALBERT  DURER  VISITS  HANS  SACHS, Richard  Gross  234 

MARIE    DE    MEDICI    AT    THE    HOUSE    OF    RUBENS Florent   WUlems  240 

CONNOISSEURS  AT  remeranut's  STUDIO, Adolphe- Alexandre  Lesrel  244 

meissonier's  ATELIER, Gcorgcs  Bretcgnicr  272 

MOZART  SINGING  HIS  REQUIEM, Tliomas  W .  Shields  314 

AN  ANECDOTE   ABOUT   BEETHOVEN, Paul  Leycndeckcr  322 

FRANZ  LISZT, Fortuut'- Joscph-Scraphin  Layraud     334 

WAGNER  AND  HIS  FRIENDS, WHltelm  Bcckmaiin  340 

RACHEL    A3   THE    MUSE    OF    GREEK    TRAGEDY,       ....  Jean  L^on  GirSme  36S 

JOE  JEFFERSON   AS  BOB   ACRES From  life  37^ 

SARAH    BERNHARDT    AS   CLEOPATRA, GeorgCS  Churin  382 


WOOD-ENGRAVINGS   AND   TYPOGRAVURES 


6 


HO.MER    RECITING    THE    ILIAD, J-  Coomans 

THE    SCHOOL    OF    ATHENS Raphael  lO 

OCTAVIA  OVERCOME  BY  mrgil's  VERSES Jean  Ingres  14 

Vol    IV  of  4  Vol.  Kd.  V 


T^  LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 

TO   FACE 
ILLUSTRATION  ARTIST  PAGE 

VIRGIL,  HORACE,  AND  VARIUS  AT  THE  HOUSE  OF  M.€CENAS,      Ch.  F.  Jalabert  I& 

CHAUCER    AND    THE    CANTERBURY    PILGRIMS, Corbould  32 

TASSO    AND    THE    TWO    ELEANORS, F.  Barth  36 

SHAKESPEARE    ARRESTED    FOR    DEER-STEALING,      ..../.  Schrader  46 

OLIVER  CROMWELL  VISITS  JOHN  MILTON, David  Neal  62 

DE  FOE  IN  THE  PILLORY, Eyre  Crowe  74 

DR.  JOHNSON'S  PENANCE, Adrian  Stokes  100 

THE    DEATH    OF    CHATTERTON,  THE    YOUNG    POET,      .       .       .      H.    WalUs  IIO 

BURNS    AND    HIGHLAND    MARY, II4 

SCHILLER    PRESENTED    TO    THE    PRINCESS    OF    SAXE-WEIMAR,    MeS  I20 

GOETHE  AND  FREDERiKE, Hermann  Kaulback  124 

SIR  WALTER  SCOTT  AT  ABBOTSFORD, Sir  William  Allan  134 

CARLYLE  AT  CHELSEA, Mrs.  AlHtig/iam  158 

TENNYSON    IN    HIS    LIBRARY, Roberts  1 84 

RAPHAEL    INTRODUCED    TO    DA    VINCI, Brune    Pagh  212 

LEO  X.  AT  Raphael's  bier, Pietro  Michis  224 

A    FETE    AT    THE    HOUSE    OF    TITIAN, F.  KraUS  228 

ALBERT  durer's  WEDDING, A.  Bodenmiilkr  232 

HOGARTH    SKETCHING    THE    HIGHWAY    OF    QUEENBOROUGH, .       248 

BENJAMIN  WEST,  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  ROYAL  ACADEMY,     .     Sir  Thomas  Lawrence  258 

ROSA    BONHEUR, E.  Dubufe  278 

Handel's  river-concert  for  george  i., A.  Hammati  304 

HAYDN  composing  HIS  "CREATION," A.  Hatnman  318 

PAGANiNi  IN  PRISON, Louis  Boulanger  326 

garrick  as  RICHARD  HI., William  Hogarth  346 

FORREST  AS  METAMORA, From  Photograph  352 

CHARLOTTE    CUSHMAN    AS    MRS.    HALLER WatkitlS  360 


Vol.  IV  of  4  Vol.  Ed. 


ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 


An  is  the  child  of  nature ;  yes. 
Her  darling  child  in  whom  we  trace 
The  features  of  the  mother's  face. 
Her  aspect  and  her  attitude. 

— Longfellow. 


HOMER 

By  William  Ewart  Gladsione 
(about    IOOO   B.C.) 


T' 


*HE  poems  of  Homer  differ  from  all  other 
known  poetry  in  this,  that  they  constitute 
in  themselves  an  encyclopaedia  of  life  and  knowl- 
edge at  a  time  when  knowledge,  indeed,  such 
as  lies  beyond  the  bounds  of  actual  experience, 
was  extremely  limited,  but  when  life  was  singu- 
larly fresh,  vivid,  and  expansive.  The  onlv  poems 
of  Homer  we  possess  arc  the  "Iliad"  and  the 
"Odyssey,"  for  the  Homeric  hymns  and  other 
productions  lose  all  title  to  stanil  in  line  with 
these  wonderful  works,  by  reason  of  conflict  in 
a  multitude  of  particulars  with  the  witness  of 
the  text,  as  well  as  of  their  poetical  inferiority. 
They  evidently  belong  to  the  period  that  follows 
the  great  migration  into  Asia  Minor,  brought 
about  I)V  the  Dorian  conquest. 

The  dictum  of  Herodotus,  whicli  places  tlie 
date  of  Homer  four  hundred  years  before  his 
own,  therefore  in  the  ninth  century  ii.c,  was  lit- 
tle better  than  mere  conjecture.  Common  opinion  has  certainly  presumed  him 
to  be  posterior  to  the  Dorian  con(|uest.  The  "Hymn  to  ,\pollo,"  however, 
which  was  the  main  |)rop  of  this  o])inion,  is  assuredly  not  his.  In  a  work  which 
attempts  to  turn  recent  discovery  to  account,  I  have  contended  tliat  the  fail  of 
Troy  cannot  properly  he  brought  lower  than  about  1250  ii.c,  and  that  Homer 
may  probably  have  lived  within  fifty  years  of  it. 

The  entire   presentation  of  life  and  character  in  the  two  poems  is  distinct 


2  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

from,  and  manifestly  anterior  to,  anything  made  known  to  us  in  Greece  under 
and  after  that  conquest.  The  study  of  Homer  has  been  darkened  and  enfeebled 
by  thrusting  backward  into  it  a  vast  mass  of  matter  belonging  to  these  later  pe- 
riods, and  even  to  the  Roman  civilization,  which  was  different  in  spirit  and  which 
entirely  lost  sight  of  the  true  position  of  Greeks  and  Trojans  and  inverted  their 
moral  as  well  as  their  martial  relations.  The  name  of  Greeks  is  a  Roman  name ; 
the  people  to  whom  Homer  has  given  immortal  fame  are  Achaians,  both  in 
designation  and  in  manners.  The  poet  paints  them  at  a  time  when  the  spirit  of 
national  life  was  rising  within  their  borders.  Its  first  efforts  had  been  seen  in  the 
expeditions  of  Achaian  natives  to  conquer  the  Asiatic  or  Egyptian  immigrants 
who  had,  under  the  name  of  Cadmeians  (etymologically,  "foreigners"),  founded 
Thebes  in  Boeotia,  and  in  the  voyage  of  the  ship  Argo  to  Colchis,  which  was 
probably  the  seat  of  a  colony  sprung  from  the  Egyptian  empire,  and  was  there- 
fore regarded  as  hostile  in  memory  of  the  antecedent  aggressions  of  that  empire. 
The  expedition  against  Troy  was  the  beginning  of  the  long  chain  of  conflicts  be- 
tween Europe  and  Asia,  which  end  with  the  Turkish  conquests  and  with  the  re- 
action of  the  last  three  hundred  years,  and  especially  of  the  nineteenth  century, 
against  them.  It  represents  an  effort  truly  enormous  toward  attaining  nationality 
in  idea  and  in  practice.  Clearing  away  obstructions,  of  which  the  cause  has 
been  partially  indicated,  we  must  next  observe  that  the  text  of  Homer  was  never 
studied  by  the  moderns  as  a  whole  in  a  searching  manner  until  within  the  last 
two  generations.  From  the  time  of  Wolf  there  was  infinite  controversy  about 
the  works  and  the  authorship,  with  little  positive  result,  except  the  establishment 
of  the  fact  that  they  were  not  written  but  handed  down  by  memory,  an  operation 
aided  and  methodized  by  the  high  position  of  bards  as  such  in  Greece  (more 
properly  Achaia,  and  afterward  Hellas),  by  the  formation  of  a  separate  school  to 
hand  down  these  particular  songs,  and  by  the  great  institution  of  the  Games  at 
a  variety  of  points  in  the  country.  At  these  centres  there  were  public  recitations 
even  before  the  poems  were  composed,  and  the  uncertainties  of  individual  mem- 
ory were  limited  and  corrected  by  competition  carried  on  in  a  presence  of  a  peo- 
ple eminently  endowed  with  the  literary  faculty,  and  by  the  vast  national  impor- 
tance of  handing  down  faithfully  a  record  which  was  the  chief  authority  touching 
the  religion,  history,  political  divisions,  and  manners  of  the  country.  Many  di- 
versities of  text  arose,  but  there  was  thus  a  continual  operation,  a  corrective  as 
well  as  a  disintegrating  process. 

The  Germans,  who  had  long  been  occupied  in  framing  careful  monographs 
which  contracted  the  contents  of  the  Homeric  text  on  many  particulars,  such  as 
the  Ship,  the  House,  and  so  forth,  have  at  length  supplied,  in  the  work  of  Dr.  E. 
Buchholz,  a  full  and  methodical  account  of  the  contents  of  the  text.  This  work 
would  fill  in  English  not  less  than  six  octavo  volumes. 

The  Greeks  called  the  poet  poietes,  the  "  maker,"  and  never  was  there  such  a 
maker  as  Homer.  The  work,  not  exclusively,  but  yet  pre-eminently  his,  was  the 
making  of  a  language,  a  religion,  and  a  nation.  The  last  named  of  these  was  his 
dominant  idea,  and  to  it  all  his  methods  may  be  referred.     Of  the  first  he  may 


HOMER  3 

have  been  little  conscious  while  he  wrought  in  his  office  as  a  bard,  which  was  to 
give  delight. 

Careful  observation  of  the  text  exhibits  three  powerful  factors  which  con- 
tribute to  the  composition  of  the  nation.  First,  the  Pelasgic  name  is  associated 
with  the  mass  of  the  people,  cultivators  of  the  soil  in  the  Greek  peninsula  and 
elsewhere,  though  not  as  their  uniform  designation,  for  in  Crete  (for  example) 
they  appear  in  conjunction  with  Achaians  and  Dorians,  representatives  of  a 
higher  stock,  and  with  Eteocretans,  who  were  probably  anterior  occuj:)ants. 
This  Pelasgian  name  commands  tlie  symi)athy  of  the  poet  and  his  laudatory  epi- 
thets ;  but  is  nowhere  used  for  the  liigher  class  or  for  the  entire  nation.  The 
other  factors  take  the  command.  The  Achaians  are  properly  the  ruling  class, 
and  justify  their  station  by  their  capacity.  But  there  is  a  third  factor  also  of 
great  power.  We  know  from  the  Egyptian  monuments  that  Greece  had  been 
within  the  sway  of  that  primitive  empire,  and  that  the  Phoenicians  were  its  mari- 
time arm,  as  they  were  also  the  universal  and  apparently  exclusive  navigators  of 
the  Mediterranean.  Whatever  came  over  sea  to  the  Achaian  land  came  in  con- 
nection with  the  Phoenician  name,  which  was  used  by  Homer  in  a  manner  analo- 
gous to  the  use  of  the  word  Frank  in  the  Levant  during  modern  times.  But  as 
Egyptian  and  Ass\'rian  knowledge  is  gradually  opened  up  to  us  we  learn  by  de- 
grees that  Phoenicia  conveyed  to  Greece  Egyptian  and  Assyrian  elements  to- 
gether with  her  own. 

The  rich  materials  of  the  Greek  civilization  can  almost  all  lie  traced  to  this 
medium  of  conveyance  from  the  East  and  South.  Great  families  which  stand  in 
this  association  were  founded  in  Greece  and  left  their  mark  upon  the  country. 
It  is  probable  that  they  may  have  exercised  in  the  fir.st  instance  a  power  dele- 
gated from  Egypt,  which  they  retained  after  her  influence  had  ])assed  away. 
Building,  metal-working,  navigation,  ornamental  arts,  natural  knowledge,  all 
carry  the  Ph(jenician  impress.  This  is  the  third  of  the  great  factors  which  were 
combined  and  evolved  in  the  wonderful  nationality  of  Greece,  a  power  as  vividly 
felt  at  this  hour  as  it  was  three  thousand  years  ago.  But  if  Phoenicia  conveyed 
the  seed,  the  soil  was  Achaian,  and  on  account  of  its  richness  that  jieninsula  sur- 
passed, in  its  developments  of  human  nature  and  action,  the  southern  and  eastern 
growths.  An  Achaian  civilization  was  the  result,  full  of  freshness  and  power,  in 
which  usage  had  a  great  sacredness,  religion  was  a  moral  spring  of  no  mean  force, 
slavery  though  it  existed  was  not  associated  with  cruelty,  tlu'  worst  extremes  of 
sin  had  no  place  in  the  life  of  the  people,  liberty  had  an  informal  l)Ut  very  real 
place  in  public  institutions,  and  manners  reached  to  much  refinement  ;  while  on 
the  other  hand,  fierce  passion  was  not  abated  by  conventional  restraints,  slaughter 
and  bondage  were  the  usual  results  of  war,  the  idea  of  property  was  but  very  ]iar- 
tially  defined,  and  though  there  were  strong  indeterminate  sentiments  of  righi 
there  is  no  word  in  Homer  signifying  law.  Upon  tlu-  whole,  though  a  yery  im- 
perfect, it  was  a  wonderful  and  noble  nursery  of  manliood. 

It  seems  clear  that  this  first  civilization  of  the  jK-ninsula  was  sadly  devastated 
by  the  rude  hands  of  the  Dorian  eonijuest.      Institutions  like   those  of  Lycurgus 


4  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

could  not  have  been  grafted  upon  the  Homeric  manners  ;  and  centuries  elapsed 
before  there  emerged  from  the  political  ruin  a  state  of  things  favorable  to  refine- 
ment and  to  progress  in  the  Greece  of  history ;  which  though  in  so  many  respects 
of  an  unequalled  splendor,  yet  had  a  less  firm  hold  than  the  Achaian  time  upon 
some  of  the  highest  social  and  moral  ideas.  For  example,  the  position  of  women 
had  greatly  declined,  liberty  was  perhaps  less  largely  conceived,  and  the  tie  be- 
tween religion  and  morality  was  more  evidently  sundered. 

After  this  sketch  of  the  national  existence  which  Homer  described,  and  to  the 
consolidation  of  which  he  powerfully  ministered,  let  us  revert  to  the  state  in 
which  he  found  and  left  the  elements  of  a  national  religion.  A  close  observation 
of  the  poems  pretty  clearly  shows  us  that  the  three  races  which  combined  to  form 
the  nation  had  each  of  them  their  distinct  religious  traditions.  It  is  also  plain 
enough  that  with  this  diversity  there  had  been  antagonism.  As  sources  illustra- 
tive of  these  propositions  which  lie  at  the  base  of  all  true  comprehension  of  the 
religion — which  may  be  called  Olympian  from  its  central  seat — I  will  point  to 
the  numerous  signs  of  a  system  of  nature-worship  as  prevailing  among  the  Pe- 
lasgian  masses  ;  to  the  alliance  in  the  war  between  the  nature-powers  and  the 
Trojans  as  against  the  loftier  Hellenic  mythology ;  to  the  legend  in  Iliad,  i.,  396- 
412,  of  the  great  war  in  heaven,  which  symbolically  describes  the  collision  on 
earth  between  the  ideas  which  were  locally  older  and  those  beginning  to  sur- 
mount them  ;  and,  finally,  to  the  traditions  extraneous  to  the  poems  of  competi- 
tions between  different  deities  for  the  local  allegiance  of  the  people  at  different 
spots,  such  as  Corinth,  to  which  Phoenician  influence  had  brought  the  Poseidon- 
worship  before  Homer's  time,  and  Athens,  which  somewhat  later  became  pecul- 
iarly the  seat  of  mixed  races.  I  have  spoken  of  nature-worship  as  the  Pelasgian 
contribution  to  the  composite  Olympian  religion.  In  the  Phoenician  share  we 
find,  as  might  be  expected,  both  Assyrian  and  Egyptian  elements.  The  best  in- 
dication we  possess  of  the  Hellenic  function  is  that  given  by  the  remarkable 
prayer  of  Achilles  to  Zeus  in  Iliad,  xvi.,  233-248.  This  prayer  on  the  sending 
forth  of  Patroclus  is  the  hinge  of  the  whole  action  of  the  poem,  and  is  preceded 
by  a  long  introduction  (220-232)  such  as  we  nowhere  else  find.  The  tone  is 
monotheistic  ;  no  partnership  of  gods  appears  in  it ;  and  the  immediate  servants 
of  Zeus  are  described  as  interpreters,  not  as  priests.  From  several  indications  it 
may  be  gathered  that  the  Hellenic  system  was  less  priestly  than  the  Troic.  It 
seems  to  have  been  an  especial  office  of  Homer  to  harmonize  and  combine  these 
diverse  elements,  and  his  Thearchy  is  as  remarkable  a  work  of  art  as  the  terres- 
trial machinery  of  the  poem.  He  has  profoundly  impressed  upon  it  the  human 
likeness  often  called  anthropomorphic,  and  which  supplied  the  basis  of  Greek 
art.  He  has  repelled  on  all  sides  from  his  classical  and  central  system  the  cult  of 
nature  and  of  animals,  but  it  is  probable  that  they  kept  their  place  in  the  local 
worships  of  the  country.  His  Zeus  is  to  a  considerable  extent  a  monarch,  while 
Poseidon  and  several  other  deities  bear  evident  marks  of  having  had  no  superior 
at  earlier  epochs  or  in  the  countries  of  their  origin.  He  arranges  them  partly  as  a 
family,  partly  as  a  commonwealth.    The  gods  properly  Olympian  correspond  with 


HOMER  5 

the  Boule  or  council  upon  earth,  while  the  orders  of  less  exalted  spirits  are  only 
summoned  on  great  occasions.  He  indicates  twenty  as  the  number  of  Olympian 
gods  proper,  following  in  this  the  Assyrian  idea.  But  they  were  far  from  hold- 
ing an  equal  place  in  his  estimation.  For  a  deity  such  as  Aphrodite  brought 
from  the  East,  and  intensely  tainted  with  sensual  passions,  he  indicates  aversion 
and  contempt.  But  for  Apollo,  whose  cardinal  idea  is  that  of  obedience  to  Zeus, 
and  for  Athene,  who  represents  a  profound  working  wisdom  that  never  fails  of 
its  end,  he  has  a  deep  reverence.  He  assorts  and  distributes  religious  traditions 
with  reference  to  the  great  ends  he  had  to  pursue  ;  carefully,  for  example,  separat- 
ing Apollo  from  the  sun,  with  which  he  bears  marks  of  having  been  in  other  sys- 
tems identified.  Of  his  other  greater  gods  it  may  be  said  that  the  dominant  idea 
is  in  Zeus  policy,  in  Here  nationality,  and  in  Poseidon  physical  force.  His  Trinity, 
which  is  conventional,  and  his  Under-world  appear  to  be  borrowed  from  Assvria, 
and  in  some  degree  from  Egypt.  One  licentious  legend  appears  in  Olympus,  but 
this  belongs  to  the  Odyssey,  and  to  a  Phoenician,  not  a  Hellenic,  circle  of  ideas. 
His  Olympian  assembly  is,  indeed,  largely  representative  of  human  appetites, 
tastes,  and  passions  ;  but  in  the  government  of  the  world  it  works  as  a  body  on 
behalf  of  justice,  and  the  suppliant  and  the  stranger  are  peculiarly  objects  of  the 
care  of  Zeus.  Accordingly,  we  find  that  the  cause  which  is  to  triumph  in  the 
Trojan  war  is  the  just  cause  ;  that  in  the  Odyssey  the  hero  is  led  through  suffer- 
ing to  peace  and  prosperity,  and  that  the  terrible  retribution  he  inflicts  has  been 
merited  by  crime.  At  various  points  of  the  system  we  trace  the  higher  traditions 
of  religion,  and  on  passing  down  to  the  classical  period  we  find  that  the  course  of 
the  mythology  has  been  a  downward  course. 

The  Troic  as  compared  with  the  Achaian  manners  are  to  a  great  extent  what 
we  should  now  call  Asiatic  as  distinguished  from  European.  Of  the  great  chief- 
tains, Achilles,  Diomed,  Ajax,  Menelaos,  and  Patroclus  appear  chiefly  to  exhibit 
the  Achaian  ideal  of  humanity  ;  Achilles,  especially,  and  on  a  colossal  scale. 
Odysseus,  the  many-sided  man,  has  a  strong  Phoenician  tinge,  though  the  dom- 
inant color  continues  to  be  Greek.  And  in  his  house  we  find  exhibited  one  of 
the  noblest  among  the  characteristics  of  the  poems  in  the  sanctity  and  perpetuity 
of  marriage.  Indeed,  the  purity  and  loyalty  of  Penelope  are,  like  the  humility 
approaching  to  penitence  of  Helen,  quite  unmatched  in  antiquity. 

The  plot  of  the  Iliad  has  been  the  subject  of  much  criticism,  on  account 
of  the  long  absence  of  Achilles,  the  hero,  from  the  action  of  the  jioem.  But 
Homer  had  to  bring  out  Achaian  character  in  its  various  forms,  and  while  the 
vastness  of  Achilles  is  on  the  stage,  every  other  Achaian  hero  must  be  eclipsed. 
Further,  Homer  was  an  itinerant  minstrel,  who  had  to  adapt  himself  to  the  sym- 
pathies and  traditions  of  the  different  portions  of  the  country.  Pclo|ionncsus 
was  the  seat  of  power,  and  its  chiefs  acquired  a  prominent  position  in  the  Iliad 
by  what  on  the  grounds  we  may  deem  a  skilful  arrangement.  But  most  skilful 
of  all  is  the  fine  adjustment  of  the  balance  as  between  Greek  and  Trojan  war- 
riors. It  will  be  found  on  close  inspection  of  details  that  the  Achaian  chieftains 
have  in  truth  a  vast  military  superiority  ;  yet  by  the  use  of  infinite  art,  Homer 


6  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

has  contrived  that  the  Trojans  shall  play  the  part  of  serious  and  considerable  an- 
tagonists, so  far  that  with  divine  aid  and  connivance  they  reduce  the  foe  to  the 
point  at  which  the  intervention  of  Achilles  becomes  necessary  for  their  deliver- 
ance, and  his  supremacy  as  an  exhibition  of  colossal  manhood  is  thoroughly 
maintained. 

The  plot  of  the  Odyssey  is  admitted  to  be  consecutive  and  regular  in 
structure.  There  are  certain  differences  in  the  mythology  which  have  been 
made  a  ground  for  supposing  a  separate  authorship.  But,  in  the  first  place,  this 
would  do  nothing  to  explain  them  ;  in  the  second,  they  find  their  natural  ex- 
planation in  observing  that  the  scene  of  the  wanderings  is  laid  in  other  lands,  be- 
yond the  circle  of  Achaian  knowledge  and  tradition,  and  that  Homer  modifies 
his  scheme  to  meet  the  ethnical  variations  as  he  gathered  them  from  the  trading 
navigators  of  Phoenicia,  who  alone  could  have  supplied  him  with  the  information 
required  for  his  purpose. 

That  information  was  probably  colored  more  or  less  by  ignorance  and  by 
fraud.  But  we  can  trace  in  it  the  sketch  of  an  imaginary  voyage  to  the  northern 
regions  of  Europe,  and  it  has  some  remarkable  features  of  internal  evidence,  sup- 
ported by  the  facts,  and  thus  pointing  to  its  genuineness.  In  latitudes  not  de- 
scribed as  separate  we  have  reports  of  the  solar  day  apparently  contradictory. 
In  one  case  there  is  hardly  any  night,  so  that  the  shepherd  might  earn  double 
wages.  In  the  other,  cloud  and  darkness  almost  shut  out  the  day.  But  we  now 
know  both  of  these  statements  to  have  a  basis  of  solid  truth  on  the  Norwegian 
coast  to  the  northward,  at  the  different  seasons  of  the  midnight  sun  in  summer, 
and  of  Christmas,  when  it  is  not  easy  to  read  at  noon. 

The  value  of  Homer  as  a  recorder  of  antiquity,  as  opening  a  large  and  dis- 
tinct chapter  of  primitive  knowledge,  is  only  now  coming  by  degrees  into  view, 
as  the  text  is  more  carefully  examined  and  its  parts  compared,  and  as  other 
branches  of  ancient  study  are  developed,  especially  as  in  Assyria  and  Egypt,  and 
by  the  remarkable  discoveries  of  Dr.  Schliemann  at  Hissarlik  and  in  Greece. 
But  the  appreciation  of  him  as  a  poet  has  never  failed,  though  it  is  disappointing 
to  find  that  a  man  so  great  as  Aristophanes  should  describe  him  simply  as  the 
bard  of  battles,  and  sad  to  think  that  in  many  of  the  Christian  centuries  his  works 
should  have  slumbered  without  notice  in  hidden  repositories.  His  place  among 
the  greatest  poets  of  the  world,  whom  no  one  supposes  to  be  more  than  three  or 
four  in  number,  has  never  been  questioned.  Considering  him  as  anterior  to  all 
literary  aids  and  training,  he  is  the  most  remarkable  phenomenon  among  them 
all.  It  may  be  well  to  specify  some  of  the  points  that  are  peculiarly  his  own. 
One  of  them  is  the  great  simplicity  of  the  structure  of  his  mind.  With  an  in- 
comparable eye  for  the  world  around  him  in  all  things,  great  and  small,  he  is  ab- 
horrent of  everything  speculative  and  abstract,  and  what  may  be  called  philoso- 
phies have  no  place  in  his  works,  almost  the  solitary  exception  being  that  he 
employs  thought  as  an  illustration  of  the  rapidity  of  the  journey  of  a  deity.  He 
is,  accordingly,  of  all  poets  the  most  simple  and  direct.  He  is  also  the  most  free 
and  genial  in  the  movement  of  his  verse ;  grateful  nature  seems  to  give  to  him 


< 


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PLATO  7 

spontaneously  the  perfection  to  which  great  men  like  \'irgil  and  Milton  had  to 
attain  only  by  effort  intense  and  sustained.  In  the  high  office  of  drawing  human 
character  in  its  multitude  of  forms  and  colors  he  seems  to  have  no  serious  rival 
except  Shakespeare.  We  call  him  an  epic  poet,  but  he  is  instinct  from  beginning 
to  end  with  the  spirit  of  the  drama,  while  we  find  in  him  the  seeds  and  rudiments 
even  of  its  form.  His  function  as  a  reciting  minstrel  greatly  aided  him  herein. 
Again,  he  had  in  his  language  an  instrument  unrivalled  for  its  facilitv,  supple- 
ness, and  versatility,  for  the  large  range  of  what  would  in  music  be  called  its  reg- 
ister, so  that  it  embraced  every  form  and  degree  of  human  thought,  feeling,  and 
emotion,  and  clothed  them  all,  from  the  lowest  to  the  loftiest,  from  the  slightest 
to  the  most  intense  and  concentrated,  in  the  dress  of  exactly  appropriate  style 
and  language.  Ills  metre  also  is  a  perfect  vehicle  of  the  language.  If  we  think 
the  range  of  his  knowledge  limited,  yet  it  was  all  that  his  countrv  and  his  age 
possessed,  and  it  was  very  greatly  more  than  has  l)een  supposed  by  readers  that 
dwelt  only  on  the  surface.  So  long  as  the  lamp  of  civilization  shall  not  have 
ceased  to  burn,  the  Iliad  and  the  Odyssey  must  hold  their  forward  place  among 
the  brightest  treasures  of  our  race. 


PLATO 

Extracts  from  "  Plato,"  by  George  Grote,  F.R.S. 
(427-347    B.C.) 


O' 


.F  Plato's  biography  we  can  furnish  nothing  better 
than  a  faint  outline.  We  are  not  fortunate  enough 
to  possess  the  work  on  Plato's  life  composed  by  his 
companion  and  disciple,  Xenocrates,  like  the  life  of  Plo- 
tinus  by  Porphyry,  or  that  of  Proclus  by  Marinus. 
Though  Plato  lived  eighty  years,  enjoying  extensive 
celebrity,  and  though  Diogenes  Lacrtius  employed  pe- 
culiar care  in  collecting  information  about  him,  yet  the 
number  of  facts  recounted  is  very  small,  and  of  those 
facts  a  considerable  proportion  is  poorly  attested. 

Plato  was  born  at  .ligina  (in  which  island  his  father 
enjoyed  an  estate  as  clerouch  or  out-settled  citizen)  in 
the  month  Thargelion  (May),  of  the  year  b.c.  427.  His 
familv,  belonging  to  the  Deme  Collytus,  was  both  an- 
cient and  noble,  in  the  sense  attached  to  that  word  at  Athens.  He  was  son  of 
Ariston  (or,  according  to  some  admirers,  of  the  God  Apollo)  and  PerictionO  ; 
his  maternal  ancestors  had  been  intimate  friends  or  relatives  of  the  law-giver 
Solon,  while  his  father  belonged  to  a  gens  tracing  its  descent  from  Codrus,  and 
even  from  the  God  Poseidon.      He  was  abso  nearly  related  to  Charmides  and  to 


8  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

Critias — this  last  the  well-known  and  violent  leader  among  the  oligarchy  called 
the  Thirty  Tyrants.  Plato  was  first  called  Aristocles,  after  his  grandfather,  but 
received  when  he  grew  up  the  name  of  Plato,  on  account  of  the  breadth  (we 
are  told)  either  of  his  forehead  or  of  his  shoulders.  Endowed  with  a  robust  phys- 
ical frame,  and  exercised  in  gymnastics,  not  merely  in  one  of  the  palaestrae  of 
Athens  (which  he  describes  graphically  in  the  Charmides),  but  also  under  an  Ar- 
geian  trainer,  he  attained  such  force  and  skill  as  to  contend  (if  we  may  credit 
Dicaearchus)  for  the  prize  of  wrestling  among  boys  at  the  Isthmian  festival. 
His  literary  training  was  commenced  under  a  schoolmaster  named  Dionysius, 
and  pursued  under  Draco,  a  celebrated  teacher  of  music  in  the  large  sense  then 
attached  to  that  word.  He  is  said  to  have  displayed  both  diligence  and  remark- 
able quickness  of  apprehension,  combined  too  with  the  utmost  gravity  and  mod- 
estv.  He  not  only  acquired  great  familiarity  with  the  poets,  but  composed 
poetry  of  his  own — dithyrambic,  lyric,  and  tragic ;  and  he  is  even  reported  to 
have  prepared  a  tragic  tetralogy,  with  the  view  of  competing  for  victory  at  the 
Dionysian  festival.  We  are  told  that  he  burned  these  poems,  when  he  attached 
himself  to  the  society  of  Socrates.  No  compositions  in  verse  remain  under  his 
name,  except  a  few  epigrams — amatory,  affectionate,  and  of  great  poetical  beauty. 
But  there  is  ample  proof  in  his  dialogues  that  the  cast  of  his  mind  was  essentially 
poetical.  Many  of  his  philosophical  speculations  are  nearly  allied  to  poetry  and 
acquire  their  hold  upon  the  mind  rather  through  imagination  and  sentiment  than 
through  reason  or  evidence. 

According  to  Diogenes  (who  on  this  point  does  not  cite  his  authority),  it  was 
about  the  twentieth  year  of  Plato's  age  (407  B.C.)  that  his  acquaintance  with 
Socrates  began.  It  may  possibly  have  begun  earlier,  but  certainly  not  later, 
since  at  the  time  of  the  conversation  (related  by  Xenophon)  between  Socrates 
and  Plato's  younger  brother  Glaucon,  there  was  already  a  friendship  established 
between  Socrates  and  Plato  ;  and  that  time  can  hardly  be  later  than  406  B.C.,  or 
the  beginning  of  405  b.c.  From  406  b.c.  down  to  399  B.C.,  when  Socrates  was 
tried  and  condemned,  Plato  seems  to  have  remained  in  friendly  relation  and 
society  with  him,  a  relation  perhaps  interrupted  during  the  severe  political  strug- 
gles between  405  b.c.  and  403  b.c,  but  revived  and  strengthened  after  the  res- 
toration of  the  democracy  in  the  last-mentioned  year. 

Whether  Plato  ever  spoke  with  success  in  the  public  assembly  we  do  not 
know  ;  he  is  said  to  have  been  shy  by  nature,  and  his  voice  was  thin  and  feeble, 
ill  adapted  for  the  Pnyx.  However,  when  the  oligarchy  of  Thirty  was  estab- 
lished, after  the  capture  and  subjugation  of  Athens,  Plato  was  not  only  relieved 
from  the  necessity  of  addressing  the  assembled  people,  but  also  obtained  addi- 
tional facilities  for  rising  into  political  influence,  through  Critias  (his  near  rela- 
tive) and  Charmides,  leading  men  among  the  new  oligarchy.  Plato  affirms  that 
he  had  always  disapproved  the  antecedent  democracy,  and  that  he  entered  on  the 
new  scheme  of  government  with  full  hope  of  seeing  justice  and  wisdom  pre- 
dominant. He  was  soon  undeceived.  The  government  of  the  Thirty  proved  a 
sanguinary  and  rapacious  tyranny,  filling  him  with  disappointment  and  disgust. 


PLATO  9 

He  was  especially  revolted  by  their  treatment  of  Socrates,  whom  they  not  only 
interdicted  from  continuing  his  habitual  colloquy  with  young  men,  but  even  tried 
to  implicate  in  nefarious  murders,  by  ordering  him  along  with  others  to  arrest 
Leon  the  Salaminian,  one  of  their  intended  victims ;  an  order  which  Socrates,  at 
the  peril  of  his  life,  disobeyed. 

Thus  mortified  and  disappointed,  Plato  withdrew  from  public  functions. 
What  part  he  took  in  the  struggle  between  the  oligarchy  and  its  democratical  as- 
sailants under  Thrasvbulus  we  are  not  informed.  But  when  the  democracv  was 
re-established  his  political  ambition  revived  and  he  again  sought  to  acquire  some 
active  influence  on  public  affairs.  Now,  however,  the  circumstances  had  become 
highly  unfavorable  to  him.  The  name  of  his  deceased  relative,  Critia.s,  was  gen- 
erally abhorred,  and  he  had  no  powerful  partisans  among  the  pojuilar  leaders. 
With  such  disadvantages,  with  anti-democratical  sentiments,  and  with  a  thin 
voice,  we  cannot  wonder  that  Plato  soon  found  public  life  repulsive,  though  he 
admits  the  remarkable  moderation  displayed  by  the  restored  Demos.  His  repug- 
nance was  aggravated  to  the  highest  pitch  of  grief  and  indignation  bv  the  trial 
and  condemnation  of  Socrates  (399  b.c.)  four  years  after  the  renewal  of  the  de- 
mocracy. At  that  moment  doubtless  the  Socratic  men  or  companions  were  un- 
popular in  a  body.  Plato,  after  having  yielded  his  best  sympathy  and  aid  at  the 
trial  of  Socrates,  retired  along  with  several  others  of  them  to  Megara.  He  made 
up  his  mind  that  for  a  man  of  his  views  and  opinions  it  was  not  only  unproht- 
able,  but  also  unsafe,  to  embark  in  active  public  life,  either  at  Athens  or  in  any 
other  Grecian  city.  He  resolved  to  devote  himself  to  philosophical  speculation 
and  to  abstain  from  practical  politics,  unless  fortune  should  present  to  him  some 
exceptional  case  of  a  city  prepared  to  welcome  and  obey  a  renovator  upon  ex- 
alted principles. 

At  Megara  Plato  passed  some  time  with  the  Megarian  Eucleides,  his  fellow- 
disciple  in  the  society  of  Socrates  and  the  founder  of  what  is  termed  the  Mega- 
ric  school  of  philosophers.  He  next  visited  Cyren6,  where  he  is  said  to  have 
become  acquainted  with  the  geometrician  Theodorus  and  to  have  studied  geom- 
etry under  him.  From  Cyr^ne  he  proceeded  to  Egypt,  interesting  himself  much 
in  the  antiquities  of  the  country  as  well  as  in  the  conversation  of  the  priests.  In 
or  about  394  B.C.,  if  we  may  trust  the  statement  of  Aristoxenus  about  the  mili- 
tary service  of  Plato  at  Corinth,  he  was  again  at  Athens.  He  afterward  went  to 
Italy  and  Sicily,  seeking  the  society  of  the  Pythagorean  philosophers,  Archytas, 
Echecrates,  Timoeus,  etc.,  at  Tarentum  and  Locri,  and  visiting  the  volcanic  man- 
ifestations of  .^itna.  It  appears  that  his  first  visit  to  Sicily  was  made  when  he 
was  about  forty  years  of  age,  which  woukl  be  387  n.c.  Here  he  made  acquaint- 
ance with  the  youthful  Dion,  over  whom  he  acquired  great  inletlectual  ascend- 
ancy. By  Dion  Plato  was  prevailed  upon  to  visit  the  elder  Dionysius  at 
Syracuse  ;  but  that  despot,  offended  by  the  free  spirit  of  his  conversation  and 
admonitions,  dismissed  him  with  displeasure,  and  even  caused  him  to  be  sold  into 
slavery  at  /Egina  on  his  voyage  home.  Though  really  sold,  however,  Plato  was 
speedily  ransomed  by  friends.     After  farther  incurring  some  risk  of  his  life  as  an 


10  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

Athenian  citizen,  in  consequence  of  the  hostile  feelings  of  the  ^'Eginetans,  he  was 
conveyed  away  safely  to  Athens,  about  386  b.c. 

It  was  at  this  period,  about  386  b.c,  that  the  continuous  and  formal  public 
teaching  of  Plato,  constituting  as  it  does  so  great  an  epoch  in  philosophy,  com- 
menced. But  I  see  no  ground  for  believing,  as  many  authors  assume,  that  he 
was  absent  from  Athens  during  the  entire  interval  between  399-386  b.c. 

The  spot  selected  by  Plato  for  his  lectures  or  teaching  was  a  garden  adjoin- 
uig  the  precinct  sacred  to  the  hero  Hecademus  or  Acedemus,  distant  from  the 
gate  of  Athens  called  Dipylon  somewhat  less  than  a  mile,  on  the  road  to  Eleu- 
sis,  toward  the  north.  In  this  precinct  there  were  both  walks,  shaded  by  trees, 
and  a  gymnasium  for  bodily  exercise  ;  close  adjoining,  Plato  either  inherited  or 
acquired  a  small  dwelling-house  and  garden,  his  own  private  property.  Here, 
under  the  name  of  the  Academy,  was  founded  the  earliest  of  those  schools  of 
philosophy,  which  continued  for  centuries  forward  to  guide  and  stimulate  the 
speculative  minds  of  Greece  and  Rome. 

We  have  scarce  any  particulars  respecting  the  growth  of  the  School  of  Ath- 
ens from  this  time  to  the  death  of  Plato,  in  347  b.c.  We  only  know  generally 
that  his  fame  as  a  lecturer  became  eminent  and  widely  diffused  ;  that  among  his 
numerous  pupils  were  included  Speusippus,  Xenocrates,  Aristotle,  Demosthenes, 
Hyperides,  Lycurgus,  etc.;  that  he  was  admired  and  consulted  by  Perdiccas  in 
Macedonia,  and  Dionysius  at  Syracuse  ;  that  he  was  also  visited  by  listeners  and 
pupils  from  all  parts  of  Greece. 

It  was  in  the  year  367-366  that  Plato  was  induced,  by  the  earnest  entreaties 
of  Dion,  to  go  from  Athens  to  Syracuse,  on  a  visit  to  the  younger  Dionysius, 
who  had  just  become  despot,  succeeding  to  his  father  of  the  same  name.  •  Dio- 
nysius II.,  then  very  young,  had  manifested  some  disposition  toward  philosophy 
and  prodigious  admiration  for  Plato,  who  was  encouraged  by  Dion  to  hope  that 
he  would  have  influence  enough  to  bring  about  an  amendment  or  thorough  re- 
form of  the  government  at  Syracuse.  This  ill-starred  visit,  with  its  momentous 
sequel,  has  been  described  in  my  "  History  of  Greece."  It  not  only  failed  com- 
pletely, but  made  matters  worse  rather  than  better ;  Dionysius  became  violently 
alienated  from  Dion  and  sent  him  into  exile.  Though  turning  a  deaf  ear  to 
Plato's  recommendations,  he  nevertheless  liked  his  conversation,  treated  him  witii 
great  respect,  detained  him  for  some  time  at  Syracuse,  and  was  prevailed  upon, 
only  by  the  philosopher's  earnest  entreaties,  to  send  him  home.  Yet  in  spite  of 
such  uncomfortable  experience,  Plato  was  induced,  after  a  certain  interval,  again 
to  leave  Athens  and  pay  a  second  visit  to  Dionysius,  mainly  in  hopes  of  procur- 
ing the  restoration  of  Dion.  In  this  hope,  too,  he  was  disappointed,  and  was 
glad  to  return,  after  a  longer  stay  than  he  wished,  to  Athens. 

The  visits  of  Plato  to  Dionysius  were  much  censured  and  his  motives  mis- 
represented by  unfriendly  critics,  and  these  reproaches  were  still  further  embit- 
tered by  the  entire  failure  of  his  hopes.  The  closing  years  of  his  long  life  were 
saddened  by  the  disastrous  turn  of  events  at  Syracuse,  aggravated  by  the  discred- 
itable abuse  of  power  and  violent  death  of  his  intimate   friend,    Dion,   which 


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PLATO  11 

brought  dishonor  both  upon  himself  and  upon  the  Academy.  Nevertheless,  he 
lived  to  the  age  of  eighty,  and  died  in  348-347  b.c,  leaving  a  competent  prop- 
erty, which  he  bequeathed  by  a  will  still  extant.  But  his  foundation,  the  Acad- 
emy, did  not  die  with  him.  It  passed  to  his  nephew  Speusippus,  who  succeeded 
him  as  teacher,  conductor  of  the  school,  or  scholarch,  and  was  himself  succeeded 
after  eight  years  by  Xenocrates  of  Chalcedon  ;  while  another  pupil  of  the  Acad- 
emy, Aristotle,  after  an  absence  of  some  years  from  Athens,  returned  thither  and 
established  a  school  of  his  own  at  the  Lyceum,  at  another  extremity  of  the  city. 

The  latter  half  of  Plato's  life  in  his  native  city  must  have  been  one  of  dignity 
and  consideration,  though  not  of  any  political  activity.  He  is  said  to  have  ad- 
dressed the  Dicasterv  as  an  advocate  for  the  accused  general  Chabrias  ;  and  we 
are  told  that  he  discharged  the  expensive  and  showy  functions  of  Choregus  with 
funds  supplied  by  Dion.  Out  of  Athens  also  his  reputation  was  very  great. 
When  he  went  to  the  Olympic  festival  of  b.c.  360  he  was  an  object  of  conspic- 
uous attention  and  respect  ;  he  was  visited  by  hearers,  young  men  of  rank  and 
ambition,  from  the  most  distant  Hellenic  cities. 

Such  is  the  sum  of  our  information  respecting  Plato.  Scanty  as  it  is  we  have 
not  even  the  advantage  of  contemporary  authority  for  any  portion  of  it.  We 
have  no  description  of  Plato  from  any  contemporary  author,  friendly  or  adverse. 
It  will  be  seen  that  after  the  death  of  Socrates  we  know  nothing  about  Plato  as 
a  man  and  a  citizen,  except  the  little  which  can  be  learned  from  his  few  epistles, 
all  written  when  he  was  very  old  and  relating  almost  entirely  to  his  peculiar  re- 
lations with  Dion  and  Dionysius.  His  dialogues,  when  we  try  to  interpret  them 
collectively,  and  gather  from  them  general  results  as  to  the  character  and  pur- 
poses of  the  author,  suggest  valuable  arguments  and  perplexing  doubts,  but  yield 
few  solutions.  In  no  one  of  the  dialogues  does  Plato  address  us  in  his  own  per- 
son. In  the  Apology  alone  (which  is  not  a  dialogue)  is  he  alluded  to  even 
as  present  ;  in  the  PhcTedon  he  is  mentioned  as  absent  from  illness.  Each  of 
the  dialogues,  direct  or  indirect,  is  conducted  from  beginning  to  end  by  the  per- 
sons whom  he  introduces.  Not  one  of  the  dialogues  affords  any  positive  internal 
evidence  showing  the  date  of  its  composition.  In  a  few  there  are  allusions  to 
prove  that  they  must  have  been  composed  at  a  period  later  than  others,  or  later 
than  some  given  event  of  known  date  ;  but  notiiing  more  can  be  positively  es- 
tablished. Nor  is  there  any  good  extraneous  testimony  to  determine  the  date  of 
any  one  among  them  ;  for  the  remark  ascribed  to  Socrates  about  the  dialogue 
called  Lysis  (which  remark,  if  authentic,  would  prove  the  dialogue  to  have  been 
composed  during  the  lifetime  of  Socrates)  ajipcars  altogether  untrustworthy. 
And  the  statement  of  some  critics,  that  the  Ph;vdrus  was  Plato's  earliest  com- 
position, is  clearly  nothing  more  than  an  inference  (doubtful  at  best,  and  in  my 
judgment  erroneous)  from  its  dithyrambic  style  and  erotic  subject. 


12 


ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 


VIRGIL 

(70-19  B.C.) 


N^ 


EXT  to  Homer  on  the  roll  of  the 
world's  epic  poets  stands  the 
name  of  \'irgil.  Acknowledged  by- 
all  as  the  greatest  of  Roman  poets, 
he  entered,  as  no  other  Roman  writ- 
er did,  into  Christian  history  and 
mediaeval  legend.  Constantine,  the 
first  Christian  emperor,  professed  to 
have  been  converted  by  the  perusal 
of  one  of  A'irgil's  "  Eclogues,"  and 
Dante  owned  him  as  his  master  and 
model,  and  his  guide  through  all  the 
circles  of  the  other  world,  while  Ital- 
ian tradition  still  regards  him  a  great 
necromancer,  a  prophet,  and  a  work- 
er of  miracles.  From  the  date  of 
his  death  till  to-day,  in  every  countrv, 
his  works  have  been  among  the  com- 
monest of  school-books,  and  editions,  commentaries  and  translations  are  countless. 
Publius  Vergilius  Maro — for  the  manuscripts  and  inscriptions  of  antiquity 
spell  his  name  Vergilius,  not  \^irgilius,  as  is  customary — was  born  near  the  pres- 
ent city  of  Mantua,  in  Upper  Italy,  in  the  year  70  b.c,  at  a  little  village  called 
Andes,  which  has  been  identified  with  the  modern  Italian  hamlet  of  Pietola.  At 
the  time  of  his  birth  this  region  was  not  included  in  the  term  "  Italy,"  but  was  a 
part  of  Cisalpine  Gaul,  where  the  inhabitants  did  not  obtain  Roman  citizenship 
till  the  year  b.c.  49.  Thus  the  writer  whose  greatest  work  is  devoted  to  immor- 
talizing the  glories  of  Rome  and  the  deeds  of  its  founder,  was  not  a  Roman  by 
birth,  and  was  over  twenty  before  he  became  a  citizen. 

His  father  seems  to  have  been  in  possession  of  a  small  property  at  Andes 
which  he  cultivated  himself,  and  where  the  poet  acquired  his  lo\'e  for  nature, 
and  the  intimate  practical  acquaintance  with  farm  labors  and  farm  management, 
which  he  used  so  effectively  in  his  most  carefully  polished  work,  his  "Georgics." 
His  first  education  was  received  at  the  town  of  Cremona,  and  the  larger  city  of 
Milan,  and  he  was  at  the  former  place  in  his  sixteenth  year  on  the  day  when  the 
poet  Lucretius  died. 

Greek  in  those  days  was  not  only  the  language  of  poetry  and  philosophy,  but 
the  language  of  polite  society  and  commercial  usage.  It  was  the  common  me- 
dium of  communication  throughout  the  Roman  world,  and  a  knowledge  of  it  was 


VIRGIL  13 

indispensable.  Hence,  after  studying  his  native  language  in  Northern  Italy,  Vir- 
gil was  sent  to  Naples,  a  city  founded  by  Greeks,  and  possessing  a  large  Greek 
population.  Here  he  studied  under  Parthenius  for  some  time,  and  then  pro- 
ceeded to  Rome,  where  he  had  as  his  instructor,  Syron,  a  member  of  the  Epi- 
curean school,  of  whose  doctrines  Virgil's  poems  bear  some  traces. 

Rome,  however,  offered  no  career  to  a  youth  who  was  not  yet  a  citizen,  and 
Virgil  seems  to  have  returned  to  his  paternal  farm,  and  there  probably  he  com- 
posed some  of  his  smaller  pieces,  which  bear  marks  of  juvenile  taste.  Among 
those  that  have  been  assigned  to  this  early  part  of  his  life,  is  one  of  considerable 
interest  to  Americans,  for  in  it  occurs  our  national  motto,  "  E  phirzbiis  imum." 
The  short  poem — it  consists  of  only  one  hundred  and  twenty-three  lines — de- 
scribes how  a  negro  serving-woman  makes  a  dish  called  Morcfuni,  a  kind  of 
salad,  in  which  various  herbs  are  blended  with  oil  and  vinegar,  till  "  out  of  many 
one  united  whole "  is  produced.  To  the  same  period  critics  have  assigned  his 
poem  on  a  "  Mosquito,"  and  some  epigrams  in  various  metres.  The  home  in 
the  country  had,  however,  soon  to  experience,  like  thousands  of  others,  a  sad 
change.  The  battle  of  Philippi  took  place,  and  Marc  Antony  and  Octavius 
Caesar,  the  future  emperor,  known  to  later  ages  as  Augustus,  were  masteis  of 
the  world.  We  have  no  hints  that  Virgil  had  been,  like  Horace,  engaged  in  the 
civil  war  in  a  military  or  any  other  capacity,  or  that  his  father  had  taken  any  part 
in  the  struggle,  but  the  country  in  which  his  property  lay  was  marked  out  for 
confiscation.  The  city  of  Cremona  had  strongly  sympathized  with  the  cause  of 
Brutus  and  the  republic,  and  in  consequence,  the  doctrine  that  "  to  the  victors  be- 
long the  spoils,"  having  a  very  practical  application  in  those  days,  its  territory 
was  seized  and  divided  among  the  victorious  soldiers,  and  with  it  was  taken  part 
of  the  territory  of  its  neighbor,  Mantua,  including  Virgil's  little  farm.  Accord- 
ing to  report  the  new  occupier  was  an  old  soldier,  named  Claudius,  and  it  was 
added  that  by  the  advice  of  Asinius  PoUio,  the  governer  of  the  province,  Virgil 
applied  to  the  young  Octavius  for  restitution  of  the  property.  The  request  was 
granted,  and  Virgil,  in  gratitude,  wrote  his  first  "  Eclogue,"  to  commemorate 
the  generosity  of  the  emperor.  These  facts,  if  at  all  true,  indicate  that  the 
young  poet  had  already  become  favorably  known  to  men  of  high  position  and 
great  influence.  Pollio  was  eminent  not  only  as  a  soldier  and  statesman  who 
played  an  important  part  in  politics,  but  as  an  orator,  a  poet,  and  an  historian, 
and  above  all  as  an  encouragcr  of  literature.  It  was  a  fortunate  day  when  a  gov- 
ernor of  such  power  to  aid,  and  such  taste  to  recognize  talent,  discovered  the 
young  poet  of  Andes,  and  saved  him  from  a  life  of  struggling  poverty.  Virgil's 
health  was  always  feeble,  and  his  temper  seems  to  have  been  rather  melancholy ; 
he  had  had  little  experience  of  life  except  in  his  remote  country  town,  and  would, 
we  may  plausibly  conjecture,  have  succumbed  in  a  contest  from  which  the  more 
worldly-wise  Horace  emerged  in  triumph. 

Pollio  remained  a  steadfast  friend,  and  Augustus  and  Maecenas  took  him 
under  their  protection.  He  was  on  terms  of  close  intimacy  with  the  latter,  and 
introduced    Horace  to   that   great   minister   and  patron   of   letters.      The   two 


14  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

poets  were  close  friends,  and  Horace  mentions  Virgil  as  being  in  the  party  which 
accompanied  Maecenas  from  Rome  to  Brundisium  about  the  year  41  B.C.  Be- 
tween 41  B.C.  and  2,7  i'-C„  he  composed,  as  already  stated,  his  "Eclogues"  or 
"  Bucolics."  In  these  idylls  we  find  many  simple  and  natural  touches,  great 
beauty  of  metre  and  language,  and  numerous  allusions  to  the  persons  and  cir- 
cumstances of  the  time.  The  fourth  of  these  ten  short  poems  is  dedicated  to 
Pollio,  and  is  to  be  noted  as  the  one  quoted  b)^  Constantine  as  leading  to  his 
conversion  to  Christianity.  "  It  is  bucolic  only  in  name,  it  is  allegorical,"  writes 
George  Long,  "  mystical,  half  historical,  and  prophetical,  enigmatical,  anything 
in  fact  but  bucolic."  The  best-known  imitation  of  his  idyll  is  Pope's  "  Mes- 
siah." Pleasing  as  all  these  poems  are,  they  do  not  represent  rural  life  in  Italy, 
they  are  in  most  part  but  echoes  of  Theocritus. 

It  is  to  the  suggestion  of  Maecenas  that  we  owe  \'irgirs  most  perfect  poem, 
his  "  Georgics,"  which  he  commenced  after  the  publication  of  the  "  Bucolics." 
To  suppose  these  four  books  of  verses  on  soils,  fruit-trees,  horses  and  cattle,  and 
finally  on  bees,  as  a  practical  treatise  to  guide  and  instruct  the  farmer,  is  absurd. 
Few  farmers  have  time  or  inclination  to  read  so  elaborate  a  work.  It  is  probable 
that  Maecenas,  while  recognizing  the  talent  of  the  "  Bucolics,"  saw  likewise  the 
unreality  of  their  pictures  of  life,  and  gave  him  the  subject  of  the  "  Georgics"  as 
being  in  the  same  line  as  that  the  poet  seemed  to  have  chosen  for  himself,  and 
yet  as  less  liable  to  lead  to  imitations  and  pilferings  from  Greek  originals.  In 
fact  there  was  no  work  that  he  could  follow.  In  this  work  we  find  great  im- 
provement in  both  taste  and  versification,  and  the  rather  uninviting  subject  is 
treated  and  embellished  in  a  way  that  makes  his  fame  rest  in  great  part  on  the 
poem.  The  fourth  book,  especially,  with  its  episode  of  Orpheus  and  Eurydice 
will  live  forever  for  its  plaintive  tenderness.  The  work  was  completed  at  Na- 
ples, after  the  battle  of  Actium,  31  b.c,  while  Augustus  was  in  the  East. 

In  B.C.  27  the  emperor  was  in  Spain,  and  thence  he  addressed  a  request  to 
let  him  have  some  monument  of  his  poetical  talent,  to  celebrate  the  emperor's 
name  as  he  had  done  that  of  Maecenas.  Virgil  replied  in  a  brief  letter,  saying, 
"As  regards  my  '/Eneas,'  if  it  were  worth  your  listening  to,  I  would  willingly 
send  it.  But  so  vast  is  the  undertaking  that  I  almost  appear  to  myself  to  have 
commenced  it  from  some  defect  in  understanding  ;  especially  since,  as  you  know, 
other  and  far  more  important  studies  are  needed  for  such  a  work."  In  the  year 
B.C.  24,  we  learn  from  the  poet  Propertius,  that  Virgil  was  then  busy  at  the  task, 
and  in  all  probability  the  former  may  have  heard  it  read  by  its  author.  The  old 
Latin  commentators  preserve  several  striking  notices  of  A-^irgil's  habit  of  reading 
or  reciting  his  poems,  both  while  he  was  composing  them  and  after  they  were 
completed,  and  especially  of  the  remarkable  beauty  and  charm  of  the  poet's  ren- 
dering of  his  own  words  and  its  powerful  effect  upon  his  hearers.  "  He  read," 
says  Suetonius,  "  at  once  with  sweetness  and  with  a  wonderful  fascination  ; "  and 
Seneca  had  a  story  of  the  poet  Julius  Montanus  saying  that  he  himself  would  at- 
tempt to  steal  something  from  Virgil  if  he  could  first  borrow  his  voice,  his  elocu- 
tion, and  his  dramatic  power  in  reading  ;  for  the  veiy  same  lines,  said  he,  which 


INuflL-i    PirtAll. 


OCTAVIA    OVERCOME    BY    VIRGIL'S   VERSES. 


VIRGIL  15 

when  the  author  himself  read  them  sounded  well,  without  him  were  empty  and 
dumb.  He  read  to  Augustus  the  whole  of  his  "  Georgics,"  and  on  another  oc- 
casion three  books  of  the  "  /Eneid,"  the  second,  the  fourth,  and  the  sixth,  the  last 
with  an  effect  upon  Octavia  not  to  be  forgotten,  for  she  was  present  at  the  read- 
ing, and  at  those  great  lines  about  her  own  son  and  his  premature  death,  which 
begin  "  Tu  Mai-ccllus  eris"  it  is  said  that  she  fainted  away  and  was  with  diffi- 
culty recovered.  She  rewarded  the  poet  munificently  for  this  tribute  to  her 
son's  memory.  For  three  years  longer  he  worked  steadily  on  the  poem,  and  in 
B.C.  19  he  resolved  to  go  to  Greece  and  devote  three  entire  years  to  polishing  and 
finishing  the  work.  He  got  as  far  as  Athens,  where  he  met  Augustus  returning 
from  the  East,  and  determined  to  go  back  to  Italy  in  his  company.  He  fell  ill, 
however,  during  a  visit  to  Megara,  the  voyage  between  Greece  and  Italy  did  not 
improve  his  health  and  he  died  a  few  days  after  landing  at  Brundisium,  in  the 
year  n.c.  19.  His  body  was  transferred  to  Naples,  and  he  was  buried  near  the 
city  at  Puteoli.  By  his  will  he  left  some  property  to  his  friends  Varius  and 
Nicca,  with  the  injunction  that  they  should  burn  the  unfinished  epic.  The  in- 
junction was  never  carried  out,  by  the  express  command  of  the  emperor,  who 
directed  Varius  to  publish  the  poem  without  any  additions  of  any  kind.  An 
order  carefully  executed,  for  as  the  ".Elneid"  stands  there  are  numerous  imper- 
fect lines. 

This  epic  poem  on  the  foundation  of  Rome  by  a  colony  from  Troy  is  based 
on  an  old  Latin  tradition,  and  is  modelled  on  the  form  of  the  poems  of 
Homer.  The  first  six  books  remind  the  student  of  the  adventures  of  Ulysses  in 
the  "  Odyssey,"  while  the  last  six  books,  recounting  the  contest  of  the  Trojan 
settlers  under  vEneas  with  the  native  inhabitants  under  their  King  Latinus,  fol- 
low the  style  of  the  battle-pieces  of  the  "  Iliad."  The  most  striking  and  original 
part  of  the  plan  of  the  poem  is  the  introduction  of  Carthage  and  the  Carthaginian 
queen,  on  whose  coasts  /Eneas,  in  defiance  of  all  chronology,  is  described  as  sufl"er- 
ing  shipwreck.  The  historic  conflict  between  Rome  and  Carthage,  when  Han- 
nibal and  his  cavalry  rode  from  one  end  of  Italy  to  another,  and  encamped  under 
the  walls  of  Rome  itself,  left  an  indelible  impression  on  the  imagination  of  the 
Romans.  The  war  with  Carthage  was  to  them  all  that  the  Arab  invasion  was  to 
Spain,  or  the  Saracen  hordes  to  Eastern  Europe.  It  was  the  first  great  struggle 
for  empire  in  times  of  which  history  holds  record,  between  the  East  and  the 
West,  between  the  Semitic  and  Aryan  races,  and  X'irgil,  with  consummate  skill, 
took  the  opportunity  of  predicting  the  future  rivalry  between  Rome  and  Car- 
thage, and  the-  ultimate  triumph  of  the  former  power.  All  through  the  poem 
there  are  allusions  to  the  history  of  Rome,  and  to  the  descent  of  the  Julian  house 
from  the  great  Trojan  hero.  The  hero  .Eneas,  himself,  is  rather  an  insipid  char- 
acter, but,  on  the  other  hand.  Dido  is  painted  with  great  force,  truth,  and  icnder- 
ness.  The  visit  to  Carthage  gives  occasion  for  the  narrative  of  the  fall  of  Troy 
in  the  second  and  third  books,  while  the  sixth  book,  describing  the  landing  in 
Italy  and  the  hero's  descent  to  the  infernal  regions,  has  been  regarded  as  con- 
taining the  esoteric  teaching  of  the  ancient  mysteries,  and  lias  inllucnced  deeply 


16 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


the  belief  of  the  Christian  world.  Virgil  liv^ed,  it  may  be  said,  at  the  parting  ot 
the  ways.  The  old  gods,  who  were  goodly  and  glad,  had  become  discredited  ; 
the  world  was  no  longer  young,  no  longer  fresh  and  fair  and  hopeful  ;  it  had 
passed  through  ages  of  war  and  misery,  it  was  harassed  by  doubt,  the  general 
feeling  was  what  we  would  now  call  pessimistic,  and  a  resigned  melancholy,  a 
keen  sense  of  there  being  something  wrong  in  the  universe,  can  be  felt  in  every 
line  of  Virgil,  and  there  are  tears  in  his  voice. 

In  person  Virgil  was  tall,  his  complexion  dark,  and  his  appearance  that  of  a 
rustic.  He  was  modest,  retiring,  loyal  to  his  friends.  The  liberality  of  Mae- 
cenas and  Augustus  had  enriched  him,  and  he  left  a  considerable  property  and  a 
house  on  the  Esquiline  Hill.  He  had  troops  of  friends,  all  the  accomplished 
men  of  the  day  ;  he  was  quite  free  from  jealousy  and  envv,  and  of  amiable  tem- 
per. No  one  speaks  of  him  except  in  terms  of  affection  and  esteem.  He  used 
his  wealth  liberally,  supporting  his  parents  generously,  and  his  father,  who  became 
blind  in  his  old  age,  liv^ed  long  enough  to  hear  of  his  son's  fame  and  feel  the  ef- 
fects of  his  prosperity. 


schools 
murder 


HORACE 

By  J.  W.  Mackail 
(65-8    B.C.) 

QUINTUS  HORATIUS  FlACCUS  [HoRACE]^ 
Latin  poet  and  satirist,  was  born  near 
Venusia,  in  Southern  Italy,  on  December 
8,  65  B.C.  His  father  was  a  manumitted 
slave,  who  as  a  collector  of  taxes  or  an 
auctioneer  had  saved  enough  money  to 
buy  a  small  estate,  and  thus  belonged  to 
the  same  class  of  small  Italian  freeholders 
as  the  parents  of  Virgil.  Apparently 
Horace  was  an  only  child,  and  as  such  re- 
ceived an  education  almost  beyond  his 
father's  means  ;  who,  instead  of  sending 
him  to  school  at  Venusia,  took  him  to 
Rome,  provided  him  with  the  dress  and 
attendance  customary  among  boys  of  the 
upper  classes,  and  sent  him  to  the  best 
masters.  At  seventeen  or  eighteen  he 
proceeded  to  Athens,  then  the  chief  school 
of  philosophv,  and  one  of  the  three  great 
of  oratory,  to  complete  his  education  ;  and  he  was  still  there  when  the 
of  Julius  Caesar,  March  15,  44  B.C.,  rekindled  the  flames  of  civil  war. 


HORACE  17 

In  the  autumn  of  this  year,  Brutus,  then  proprietor  of  Macedonia,  visited 
Athens  while  levying  troops.  Horace  joined  his  side  ;  and  such  was  the  scarcity 
of  Roman  officers,  that  though  barely  twenty-one,  and  totally  without  military 
experience,  he  was  at  once  given  a  high  commission.  He  was  present  at  the  bat- 
tle of  Philippi,  and  joined  in  the  general  flight  that  followed  the  republican  de- 
feat ;  he  found  his  way  back  to  Italy,  and  apparently  was  not  thought  important 
enough  for  proscription  by  the  triumvirate.  His  property,  however,  had  been 
confiscated,  and  he  found  employment  in  the  lower  grade  of  the  civil  service  ta 
gain  a  livelihood. 

It  was  at  this  period  that  poverty,  he  says,  drove  him  to  make  verses.  His- 
earliest  were  chiefly  satires  and  personal  lampoons  ;  but  it  was  probably  from 
some  of  his  first  lyrical  pieces,  in  which  he  showed  a  new  mastery  of  the  Roman 
language,  that  he  became  known  to  Varius  and  Virgil,  who  in  or  about  38  b.c. 
introduced  him  to  Maecenas,  the  confidential  minister  of  Octavianus  and  a  mu- 
nificent patron  of  art  and  letters.  The  friendship  thus  formed  was  uninterrupted, 
till  the  death  of  Maecenas,  to  whose  liberality  Horace  owed  release  from  busi- 
ness and  the  gift  of  the  celebrated  farm  among  the  Sabine  Hills. 

From  this  time  forward  his  life  was  without  marked  incident.  His  springs 
and  summers  were  generally  spent  at  Rome,  where  he  enjoyed  the  intimacy  of 
nearly  all  the  most  prominent  men  of  the  time ;  his  autumns  at  the  Sabine  farm, 
or  a  small  villa  which  he  possessed  at  Tibur ;  he  sometimes  passed  the  winter  ire 
the  milder  seaside  air  of  Baias.  Mfecenas  introduced  him  to  Augustus,  who,  ac- 
cording to  Suetonius,  off"ered  him  a  place  in  his  own  household,  which  the  poet 
prudently  declined.  But  as  the  unrivalled  lyric  poet  of  the  time  Horace  grad- 
ually acquired  the  position  of  poet-laureate  ;  and  his  ode  written  to  command  for 
the  celebration  of  the  Secular  Games  in  17  b.c,  with  the  official  odes  which  fol- 
lowed it  on  the  victories  of  Tiberius  and  Drusus,  and  on  the  glories  of  the  Au- 
gustan age,  mark  the  highest  level  which  this  kind  of  poetry  has  reached. 

On  November  27,  8  b.c,  he  died  in  his  fifty-seventh  year.  Virgil  had  died 
eleven  years  before.  TibuUus  and  Propertius  soon  after  Virgil.  Ovid,  still  a 
young  man,  was  the  only  considerable  poet  whom  he  left  behind  ;  and  with  his 
death  the  Augustan  age  of  Latin  poetry  ends. 

The  following  is  the  list  of  Horace's  works  arranged  according  to  the  dates 
which  have  been  most  plausibly  fi.xed  by  scholars.  Some  of  the  questions  of 
Horatian  chronology,  however,  are  still  at  issue,  and  to  most  of  the  dates  now  to 
be  given  the  word  "  about  "  should  be  prefixed. 

The  first  book  of  Satires,  ten  in  number,  his  earliest  publication,  appeared 
35  B.C.  A  second  volume  of  eight  satires,  showing  more  maturity  and  finish 
than  the  first,  was  published  30  b.c.  ;  and  about  the  same  time  the  small  collec- 
tion of  lyrics  in  iambic  and  composite  metres,  imitated  from  the  Greek  of  Archi- 
lochus,  which  is  known  as  the  Epodes.  In  19  b.c,  at  the  age  of  forty-six,  he 
produced  his  greatest  work,  three  books  of  odes,  a  small  volume  which  repre- 
sents the  long  labor  of  years,  and  which  placed  him  at  once  in  the  front  rank  of 
poets.  About  the  same  time,  whether  before  or  after  remains  uncertain,  is  to  be 
2 


18  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

placed  his  incomparable  volume  of  epistles,  which  in  grace,  ease,  good  sense, 
ami  wit  mark  as  high  a  level  as  the  odes  do  in  terseness,  melody,  and  exquisite 
finish.  These  two  works  are  Horace's  great  achievement.  The  remainder  of 
his  writings  demand  but  brief  notice.  They  are  the  "  Carmen  Seculare  ;  "  a 
fourth  book  of  odes,  with  all  the  perfection  of  style  of  the  others,  but  show- 
ing a  slight  decline  in  freshness  ;  and  three  more  epistles,  one,  that  addressed 
to  Florus,  the  most  charming  in  its  lively  and  graceful  ease  of  all  Horace's 
familiar  writings  ;  the  other  two,  somewhat  fragmentary  essays  in  literary  criti- 
cism. One  of  them,  generally  known  as  the  "  Ars  Poetica,"  was  perhaps  left  un- 
finished at  his  death. 

In  his  youth  Horace  had  been  an  aristocrat,  but  his  choice  of  sides  was  per- 
haps more  the  result  of  accident  than  of  conviction,  and  he  afterward  acquiesced 
without  great  difficulty  in  the  imperial  government.  His  acquiescence  was  not 
at  first  untempered  with  regret  ;  and  in  the  odes  modern  critics  have  found 
touches  of  veiled  sarcasm  against  the  new  monarchy  and  even  a  certain  sympathy 
with  the  abortive  conspiracy  of  Murena  in  22  b.c.  But  as  the  empire  grew 
stronger  and  the  advantages  which  it  brought  became  more  evident — the  repair 
of  the  destruction  caused  by  the  civil  wars,  the  organization  of  government,  the 
development  of  agriculture  and  commerce,  the  establishment  at  home  and  abroad 
of  the  peace  of  Rome — his  tone  passes  into  real  enthusiasm  for  the  new  order. 

Horace  professed  himself  a  follower  of  the  doctrines  of  Epicurus,  which  he 
took  as  a  reasonable  mean  between  the  harshness  of  stoicism  and  the  low  moral- 
ity of  the  Cyrenaics.  In  his  odes,  especially  those  written  on  public  occasions, 
he  uses,  as  all  public  men  did,  the  language  of  the  national  religion.  But  both 
in  religion  and  in  philosophy  he  remains  before  all  things  a  man  of  the  world ; 
his  satire  is  more  of  manners  and  follies  than  of  vice  or  impiety  ;  and  his  excel- 
lent sense  keeps  him  always  to  that  "golden  mean  "  in  which  he  sums  up  the 
lesson  of  Epicurus.  As  a  critic  he  shows  the  same  general  good  sense,  but  his 
criticisms  do  not  profess  to  be  original  or  to  go  much  beneath  the  surface.  In 
Greek  literature  he  follows  Alexandrian  taste  ;  in  Latin  he  represents  the  ten- 
dency of  his  age  to  undervalue  the  earlier  efforts  of  the  native  genius  and  lay 
great  stress  on  the  technical  finish  of  his  own  day. 

From  his  own  lifetime  till  now  Horace  has  had  a  popularity  unexampled  in 
literature.  A  hundred  generations  who  have  learned  him  as  school-boys  have  re- 
membered and  returned  to  him  in  mature  age  as  to  a  personal  friend.  He  is 
one  of  those  rare  examples,  like  Julius  Caesar  in  politics,  of  genius  which  ripens 
late  and  leaves  the  more  enduring  traces.  Up  to  the  age  of  thirt3^-five  his  work 
is  still  crude  and  tentative  ;  afterward  it  is  characterized  by  a  jewel  finish,  an  ex- 
quisite sense  of  language  which  weighs  every  word  accurately  and  makes  cv-ery 
word  inevitable  and  perfect.  He  was  not  a  profound  thinker  ;  his  philosophy 
is  rather  that  of  the  market-place  than  of  the  schools,  he  does  not  move  among 
high  ideals  or  subtle  emotions.  The  romantic  note  which  makes  Virgil  so  magi- 
cal and  prophetic  a  figure  at  that  turning-point  of  the  world's  history  has  no 
place  in  Horace  ;  to  gain  a  universal  audience  he  offers  nothing  more  and  noth- 


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DANTE 


19 


ing  less  than  what  is  universal  to  mankind.  Of  the  common  range  of  thought 
and  feeling  he  is  perfect  and  absolute  master  ;  and  in  the  graver  passages  of  the 
epistles,  as  in  the  sad  and  noble  cadence  of  his  most  famous  odes,  the  melan- 
choly temper  which  underlay  his  quick  and  bright  humor  touches  the  deepest 
springs  of  human  nature.  Of  his  style  the  most  perfect  criticism  was  given  in 
the  next  generation  by  a  single  phrase,  Horatii  curiosa  fclicitas;  of  no  poet 
can  it  be  more  truly  said,  in  the  phrase  of  the  Greek  dramatist  Agathon,  that 
"skill  has  an  affection  for  luck  and  luck  for  skill."  His  poetry  supplies  more 
phrases  which  have  become  proverbial  than  the  rest  of  Latin  literature  put  to- 
gether. To  suggest  a  parallel  in  English  literature  we  must  unite  in  thought  the 
excellences  of  Pope  and  Gray  with  the  easy  wit  and  cultured  grace  of  Addison. 
Horace's  historical  position  in  Latin  literature  is  this :  on  the  one  hand,  he 
cairied  on  and  perfected  the  native  Roman  growth,  satire,  from  the  ruder  essays 
of  Lucilius,  so  as  to  make  Roman  life  from  day  to  day,  in  city  and  country,  live 
anew  under  his  pen ;  on  the  other  hand,  he  naturalized  the  metres  and  manner  of 
the  great  Greek  lyric  poets  from  Alcaeus  and  Sappho  downward.  Before  Hor- 
ace Latin  lyric  poetry  is  represented  almost  wholly  by  the  brilliant  but  technically 
immature  poems  of  Catullus  ;  after  him  it  ceases  to  exist.  For  what  he  made  it 
he  claims,  in  a  studied  modesty  of  phrase  but  with  a  just  sense  of  his  own  merits, 
an  immortality  to  rival  that  of  Rome. 


DANTE 

By  Archdeacon  Farrar,  D.D.,  F.R.S. 
(1265-1321) 


r 


N  this  paper  I  will  giv^e  a  rapid  sketch  of  Dante's 
life,  and  then  will  try  to  point  to  some  of  the  feat- 
ures of  a  poem  which  must  ever  take  its  place  among 
the  supremest  efforts  of  the  human  intellect,  side  by 
side  with  Homer's  "Iliad,"  and  Virgil's  "^'Encid,"  and 
Milton's  "  Paradise  Lost,"  and  the  plays  of  Shakes- 
peare ;  and  which  is  not  less  great  than  any  of  these  in 
its  immortal  and  epoch-making  significance. 

Dante  was  born  in  1265,  in  the  small  room  of  a 
small  house  in  Florence,  still  pointed  out  as  the  Casa 
di  Dante.  His  father,  Aldighicri,  was  a  lawyer,  and 
belonged  to  the  humbler  class  of  burgher-nobles.  The 
family  seems  to  have  changed  its  name  into  Alighieri, 
"  the  wing-hearers,"  at  a  later  time,  in  accordance  with 
the  beautiful  coat  of  arms  which  they  adopted — a  wing  in  an  azure  field.  Dante 
was  a  devout,  beautiful,  precocious  boy,  and  his  susceptible  soul  caught  a  touch 


20  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

of  "  phantasy  and  flame  "  from  the  sight  of  Beatrice,  daughter  of  Folco  de'  Porti- 
nari,  whom  he  saw  clad  in  crimson  for  a  festa.  From  that  day  the  fair  girl,  with 
her  rosy  cheeks,  and  golden  hair,  and  blue  eyes,  became  to  the  dreamy  boy  a 
vision  of  angelic  beauty,  an  ideal  of  saintly  purity  and  truth.  But  while  he  cher- 
ished this  inward  love  he  continued  to  study  under  his  master,  Brunetto  Latini, 
and  acquired  not  only  all  the  best  learning,  but  also  all  the  most  brilliant  accom- 
plishments of  his  day.  He  had  never  breathed  a  word  of  his  love  to  Beatrice  ;  it 
was  of  the  unselfish,  adoring,  chivalrous  type,  which  was  content  to  worship  in 
silence.  Beatrice  was  wedded  to  another,  and  shortly  afterward,  in  1289,  she 
died.  So  far  from  causing  to  Dante  any  self-reproach,  he  regarded  his  love  for 
her  as  the  most  ennobling  and  purifying  influence  of  his  life — a  sort  of  moral 
regeneration.  Beatrice  became  to  him  the  type  of  Theology  and  Heavenly 
truth.  Nor  did  his  love  in  any  way  interfere  with  the  studies  or  activities  of  his 
life.  His  sonnets  early  gained  him  fame  as  a  poet,  and  the  lovely  portrait  of  him 
— painted  by  Giotto,  on  the  walls  of  the  Bargello,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four, 
side  by  side  with  Brunetto  Latini  and  Corso  Donati,  and  holding  in  his  hand  a 
pomegranate,  the  mystic  type  of  good  works — shows  that  he  was  already  a  man 
of  distinction,  and  a  favorite  in  the  upper  classes  of  Florentine  society.  He  be- 
gan to  take  an  active  part  in  politics,  and  in  1 295  was  formally  enrolled  in  the 
Guild  of  Physicians  and  Apothecaries.  On  June  1 1,  1289,  he  fought  as  a  volun^ 
teer  in  the  battle  of  Campaldino.  Amid  these  scenes  of  ambition  and  warfare 
he  fell  away  for  a  time  from  his  holiest  aspirations.  From  theology  he  turned 
to  purely  human  and  materialist  philosophy  ;  from  an  ideal  of  pure  love  to  earth- 
lier  defilements.  It  was  perhaps  with  a  desire  to  aid  himself  in  the  struggle 
against  life's  temptations  that  he  seems  to  have  become  a  member  of  the  Terti- 
ary Order  of  St.  Francis  of  Assisi,  for  whom  he  had  a  passionate  admiration. 
The  Tertiaries  did  not  abandon  the  secular  life,  but  wore  the  cord  of  the  order, 
and  pledged  themselves  to  lives  of  sanctity  and  devotion.  Legend  says  that  by 
his  own  desire  he  was  buried  in  the  dress  of  a  Franciscan  Tertiary.  Yet  there  is 
evidence  that  he  felt  the  inefficacy  of  any  external  bond.  Experience  taught 
him  that  the  serge  robe  and  the  binding  cord  might  only  be  the  concealment  of 
the  hypocrite  ;  and  that  they  were  worse  than  valueless  without  the  purification 
of  the  heart.  In  the  eighth  Bolgia  of  the  eighth  circle  of  the  "Inferno"  he  sees 
the  givers  of  evil  counsel,  and  among  them  Guido  da  Montefeltro,  who,  toward 
the  close  of  his  life  had  become  a  Cordelier  or  Franciscan  Friar,  hoping  to  make 
atonement  for  his  sins.  But  tempted  by  Boniface  VIII.  with  a  promise  of  futile 
absolution,  he  gave  him  advice  to  take  the  town  of  Palestrina  by  "  long  promises 
and  scant  fulfilments."  Trusting  in  the  Pope's  absolution,  and  not  in  the  law  of 
God,  he  was  one  of  those  who — ■ 

"  Dying  put  on  the  weeds  of  Dominic, 
Or  in  Franciscan  tliink  to  pass  disguised," 

and  believed  that  St.  Francis  would  draw  him  up  by  his  cord  even  from  the  pit 
of  hell.      But  when  he  dies,  though  St.  Francis  comes   to  take  him,  one  of  the 


DANTE  21 

Black  Cherubim  of  hell  seizes  and  claims  him,  truly  urging  that  absolution  for 
an  intended  sin  is  a  contradiction  in  terms,  since  absolution  assumes  penitence. 
Again,  among  the  hypocrites  in  the  sixth  Bolgia,  Dante  sees  men  approach  in 
dazzling  cloaks,  of  which  the  hoods  cover  their  eyes  and  face,  like  those  worn  by 
the  monks  of  Cologne  ;  but  he  finds  that  they  are  crushing  weights  of  gilded 
lead — splendid  semblance  and  agonizing,  destroying  reality.  Again,  when  the 
two  poets,  Dante  and  A'irgil,  came  to  the  Abyss  of  Evil-pits  (Malebolge),  down 
which  the  crimson  stream  of  Phlegethon  leaps  in  "  a  Niagara  of  blood,"  he  is  on 
the  edge  of  the  Circle  of  Fraud  in  all  its  varieties,  down  which  thev  are  to  be 
carried  on  the  back  of  Geryon,  the  triple-bodied  serpent-monster,  who  is  the 
type  of  all  human  and  demonic  falsity.  And  how  is  that  monster  to  be  evoked 
from  the  depth  ?  Dante  is  bidden  to  take  off  the  cord  which  girds  him — the 
cord  with  which  he  had  endeavored  in  old  days  to  bind  the  spotted  panther  of 
sensual  temptation — and  to  fling  it  into  the  void  profound.  He  does  so,  and  the 
monster,  type  of  the  brutal  and  the  human  in  our  nature  when  both  are  false, 
comes  swimming  and  circling  up  from  below.  "  The  outward  form  " —  symbol- 
ized by  the  cord — "  when  associated  with  unreality,  only  attracts  the  worst  sym- 
bol of  unreality."  Once  more,  ere  he  begins  to  climb  the  steep  terraces  of  the 
hill  of  Purgatory  and  true  repentance,  he  has  to  be  girt  with  a  far  different  cord, 
even  with  a  humble  rush,  the  only  plant  which — because  it  bows  to  the  billows 
and  the  wind — will  grow  among  the  beating  waves  of  the  sea  which  surrounds 
the  mountain  of  Purgatory.  That  cord  of  rush  is  the  type,  not  of  outward  pro- 
fession, but  of  humble  sincerity. 

Dante,  in  his  characteristic  way,  does  not  pause  to  explain  any  of  these  sym- 
bols to  us.  He  leaves  them  to  our  own  thought,  but  they  all  point  to  the  one 
great  lesson  that  God  needs  not  the  service  of  externalism,  but  the  preparation 
of  the  heart. 

In  1292,  probably  at  the  wish  of  his  friends,  Dante  married  Gemma  Donati, 
She  bore  him  seven  children  in  seven  years,  and  there  is  nothing  to  show  that 
she  was  not  a  true  and  faithful  wife  to  him,  though  it  is  quite  probable,  from  his 
absolute  silence  respecting  her,  that  the  deepest  grounds  of  sympathy  hardly  ex- 
isted between  them. 

About  the  time  of  his  marriage  he  plunged  more  earnestly  into  politics,  and 
became  one  of  the  Priori  of  Florence.  He  felt  himself  that  a  change  for  the 
worse  had  passed  over  his  life.  It  was  no  longer  so  pure,  so  simple,  so  devout  as 
it  once  had  been.  In  the  year  1300,  the  year  of  the  Great  Jubilee  which  had 
been  preached  by  Pope  Boniface  VIII.,  he  was  in  the  mid-path  of  life,  and  was 
lost,  as  he  allegorically  describes  it  at  the  beginning  of  the  "  Inferno,"  in  a  wild 
and  savage  wood.  He  was  hindered  from  ascending  the  sunny  hill  of  heavenly 
aims  by  the  speckled  panther  of  sensuality,  the  gaunt,  gray  wolf  of  avaricious 
selfishness,  and  the  fierce  lion  of  wrath  and  ambitious  pride.  But  he  was  re- 
stored to  hope  and  effort  by  a  vision  of  Beatrice,  which  seems  to  have  come  to  him 
before  his  Easter  communion,  and  fixed  in  his  mind  the  purpose  of  writing  about 
Beatrice — in  her  ideal  aspect  of  Divine  Truth — "what  never  was  writ  of  woman." 


22  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

As  a  statesman,  Dante,  like  most  of  the  Florentines,  was  at  this  time  a 
Guelph,  and  an  adherent  of  the  papal  party,  though  in  later  years  he  became,  by 
mature  conviction,  a  Ghibelline,  and  placed  his  hopes  for  Italy  in  the  intervention 
of  the  emperor.  The  disputes  between  the  Guelphs  and  Ghibellines  were  com- 
plicated by  the  party  factions  of  Neri  and  Bianchi,  and  by  the  influence  of  Dante 
the  leaders  of  both  factions  were  banished  from  the  city,  and  among  them  his 
dearest  friend,  Guido  Cavalcanti.  At  this  time  Pope  Boniface  encouraged 
Charles  of  Valois  to  enter  Florence  with  an  army.  Dante  resisted  the  proposal, 
and  was  sent  as  an  ambassador  to  Rome.  During  his  absence  a  decree  of  banish- 
ment was  passed  upon  him.  The  Neri  faction  triumphed.  The  house  of  Dante 
was  sacked  and  burned.      He  never  saw  Florence  more. 

The  news  of  his  sentence  reached  him  in  Siena,  in  April,  1302,  and  from  that 
time  began  the  last  sad  phases  of  his  life,  the  long,  slow  agony  of  his  exile  and 
bitter  disappointment.  Disillusioned,  separated  from  his  wife,  his  children,  the 
city  of  his  love,  he  wandered  from  city  to  city,  disgusted  with  the  baseness  alike 
of  Guelphs  and  Ghibellines,  feeling  how  salt  is  the  bread  of  e.xile,  and  how  hard 
it  is  to  climb  another's  stairs.  "  Alas,"  he  savs,  "  I  have  gone  about  like  a  men- 
dicant, showing  against  my  will  the  wounds  with  which  fortune  hath  smitten  me. 
I  have  indeed  been  a  vessel  without  sail  and  without  rudder,  carried  to  divers 
shores  by  the  dry  wind  that  springs  from  povertv."  In  13 16  he  did  indeed  re- 
ceive from  ungrateful  Florence  an  offer  of  return,  but  on  the  unworthy  conditions 
that  he  should  pay  a  fine  and  publicly  acknowledge  his  criminalit}^  He  scorned 
such  recompense  of  his  innocence  after  having  suffered  exile  for  well-nigh  three 
lustres.  "  If,"  he  wrote,  "by  no  honorable  way  can  entrance  be  found  into  Flor- 
ence, there  will  I  never  enter.  What  ?  Can  I  not  from  every  corner  of  the  earth 
behold  the  sun  and  the  stars  ?  Can  I  not  under  every  climate  of  heaven  meditate 
the  sweetest  truths,  except  I  first  make  myself  a  man  of  ignominy  in  the  face  of 
Florence  ?  " 

Looking  merely  at  outward  success,  men  would  have  called  the  life  of  Dante 
a  failure  and  his  career  a  blighted  career.  But  his  misery  was  the  condition  of 
his  immortal  greatness.  He  endured  for  many  a  year  the  insults  of  the  foolish 
and  the  company  of  the  base,  and  on  earth  he  did  not  find  the  peace  for  which  his 
heart  so  sorely  yearned.  He  died  in  1321,  at  the  age  of  fifty -six,  of  a  broken 
heart,  and  lies,  not  at  the  Florence  which  he  loved,  but  at  Ravenna,  near  the 
now  blighted  pine  woods,  on  the  bleak  Adrian  shore.  But  if  he  lost  himself  he 
found  himself.  Fie  achieved  his  true  greatness,  not  among  the  bloody  squabbles 
of  political  intrigue,  but  in  the  achievement  of  his  great  works,  and  above  all  of 
that  "  Divine  Comedy,"  which  was  "  the  imperishable  monument  of  his  love  of 
Beatrice,  now  identified  with  Divine  Philosophy — his  final  gift  to  humanity  and 
offering  to  God." 

On  the  consummate  greatness  of  that  poem  as  the  one  full  and  perfect  voice 
of  many  silent  centuries  I  only  touch,  for  it  would  require  a  volume  to  elucidate 
its  many-sided  significance.  It  is  not  one  thing,  but  many  things.  In  one  as- 
pect it  is  an  autobiography  as  faithful  as  those  of  St.  Augustine  or  of  Rousseau, 


DANTE  23 

though  transcendently  purer  and  greater.  It  is  a  vision,  like  the  "  Pilgrim's  Prog- 
ress" of  John  Bunyan,  but  written  with  incomparably  wider  knowledge  and 
keener  insight.  It  is  a  soul's  history,  like  Goethe's  "  Faust,"  but  attaining  to  a 
far  loftier  level  of  faith  and  ihoughtfulness  and  moral  elevation.  It  is  a  divine 
poem,  like  Milton's  "  Paradise  Lost,"  dealing,  as  Milton  does,  with  God  and 
Satan,  and  heaven  and  hell,  but  of  wider  range  and  intenser  utterance.  With 
the  plays  of  Shakespeare,  in  their  oceanic  and  myriad-minded  variety,  it  can 
hardlv  be  compaied,  because  it  originated  under  conditions  so  widely  different, 
and  was  developed  in  an  environment  so  strangely  dissimilar.  It  is,  moreover, 
one  poem,  while  the\'  form  a  multitude  of  dramas.  But  few  would  hesitate  to 
admit  that  in  reading  Dante  we  are  face  to  face  with  a  soul,  if  less  gifted  yet  less 
earthly  than  that  of  Shakespeare  ;  a  soul  which  "  was  like  a  star  and  dwelt  apart  " — • 

"  Soul  awful,  if  this  world  has  ever  held 
An  awful  soul." 

I  would  urge  all  who  are  unacquainted  with  Dante  to  read,  or  rather  to  study, 
him  at  once.  They  could  study  no  more  ennoliling  teacher.  If  thcv  are  un- 
familiar w'ith  Italian,  they  may  read  the  faithful  prose  version  of  the  "In- 
ferno "  by  John  Carlyle,  of  the  "  Purgatorio  "  and  "  Paradiso,"  by  A.  J.  Butler, 
or  the  translations  by  Gary  in  blank  verse,  and  the  Dean  of  Wells  in  tcrza  rinia. 
If  they  desire  to  begin  with  some  general  introduction,  they  may  read  the  fine 
essays  by  Dean  Church  and  Mr.  Lowell  (in  "  Among  ni}'  Books  ")  and  the  ex- 
cellent "  Shadow  of  Dante,"  by  Maria  Rosetti.  To  such  books,  or  to  those  of 
Mrs.  Oliphant  and  others,  I  must  refer  the  reader  for  all  details  respecting  the 
structure  of  the  poem  which  he  called  the  "  Divine  Comedy."  The  name  "  Coni- 
edv  "  must  not  mislead  any  one.  The  poem  is  far  too  stately,  intense,  and  terri- 
ble for  humor  of  an\'  kind.  It  was  only  called  "  Commcdia  "  partly  because  it 
ends  happily,  and  partly  because  it  is  written  in  a  simple  style  and  in  the  vernac- 
ular Italian,  not,  as  was  then  the  almost  universal  custom  for  serious  works,  in 
Latin.     The  name  "  Divina  "  is  meant  to  indicate  its  solemnity  and  sacredness. 

Many  are  unable  to  appreiund  (he  greatness  of  the  "  Divine  C'omedy."  \"ol- 
taire  called  the  "  Inferno  "  revolting,  the  "  Purgatorio"  dull,  and  the  "  Paradiso  " 
unreadable.  The  reason  is  because  they  are  not  rightly  attuned  for  the  accept- 
ance of  the  great  truths  which  the  poem  teaches,  and  because  they  look  at  it 
from  a  whollv  mistaken  standpoint.  If  anyone  supposes  that  the  "  Inferno,"  for 
instance,  is  meant  for  a  burning  torture-chamber  of  endless  torments  and  horrible 
vivisection,  he  entirely  misses  the  central  meaning  of  the  poem  as  Dante  himself 
explained  it.  For  he  said  that  it  was  not  so  much  meant  to  foreshadow  the  state 
of  souls  after  death — although  on  that  subject  he  accepted,  without  attempting 
wholly  to  shake  them  off,  the  horrors  which,  in  theory,  formed  part  of  mediaeval 
Catholicism — but  rather  "  man  as  rendering  himself  liable  by  the  exercise  of 
free-will  to  the  rewards  and  |)unishments  of  justice."  The  hell  of  Dante  is  the 
hell  (if  self;  the  hell  of  a  soul  which  lias  not  God  in  all  its  thoughts  ;  the  hell  of 
final  impenitence,  of  sin  cursed   l)y  the  exclusive  possession  of  sin.      It  is  a  hell 


24  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

which  exists  no  less  in  this  world  than  in  the  ne7<t  ;  just  as  his  pura^atoiy  reflects 
the  mingled  joy  and  anguish  of  true  repentance,  and  his  heaven  is  the  eternal 
peace  of  God,  which  men  can  possess  here  and  now,  and  which  the  world  can 
neither  give  nor  take  away.  In  other  words,  hell  is  not  an  obscure  and  material 
slaughter-house,  but  the  Gehenna  of  evil  deliberately  chosen  ;  and  heaven  is  not 
a  pagoda  of  jewels,  but  the  presence  and  the  light  of  God.  Hence  the  "  Divine 
Comedy  "  belongs  to  all  time  and  to  all  place.  While  it  supremely  sums  up 
the  particular  form  assumed  by  the  religion  of  the  Middle  Ages,  it  contains  the 
eternal  elements  of  all  true  religion  in  the  life  history  of  a  soul,  redeemed  from 
sin  and  error,  from  lust  and  wrath  and  greed,  and  restored  to  the  right  path  by 
the  reason  and  the  grace  which  enable  it  to  see  the  things  that  are,  and  to  see 
them  as  they  are.  The  "  Inferno,"  as  has  been  said  elsewhere,  is  the  history  of  a 
soul  descending  through  lower  and  lower  stages  of  self-will  till  it  sinks  at  last 
into  those  icy  depths  of  Cocytus,  wherein  the  soul  is  utterly  emptied  of  God,  and 
utterly  filled  with  the  loathly  emptiness  of  self  ;  the  "  Purgatory  "  is  the  history 
of  the  soul  as  it  is  gradually  purged  from  sin  and  self,  by  effort  and  penitence 
and  hope  ;  the  "  Paradise  "  is  the  soul  entirelv  filled  with  the  fulness  of  God. 

The  moral  truths  in  which  the  great  poem  abounds  are  numberless  and  of  in- 
finite interest.  On  these  I  cannot  dwell,  for  to  him  who  penetrates  to  the  inner 
meaning  of  the  allegory  they  are  found  on  every  page.  But  I  may  point  out  one 
or  two  supreme  lessons  which  run  throughout  the  teaching. 

One  is  the  lesson  that  like  makes  like — the  lesson  of  modification  by  environ- 
ment. We  know  how  in  Norfolk  Island  the  convicts  often  degenerated  almost 
into  fiends  because  they  associated  with  natures  which  had  made  themselves  fiend- 
like, and  were  cut  off  from  gentle,  wholesome,  and  inspiring  influences. 

So  it  is  in  Dante's  "  Inferno."  His  evil  men  and  seducers  wax  ever  worse 
and  worse  because  they  have  none  around  them  save  souls  lost  like  their  own. 
There  is  no  brightening  touch  in  the  "  Inferno."  The  name  of  Christ  is  never 
mentioned  in  its  polluted  air.  The  only  angel  who  appears  in  it  is  not  one  of 
the  radiant  Sympathies,  with  fair  golden  heads  and  dazzling  faces  and  wings  and 
robes  of  tender  green,  of  the  "  Purgatory,"  not  one  of  the  living  topazes  or  gold- 
en splendors  of  the  "  Paradise"  ;  but  is  stern,  disdainful,  silent,  waving  from  be- 
fore his  face  all  contact  with  the  filthy  gloom.  His  Lucifer  is  no  flickering,  gen- 
tlemanly, philosophic  man  of  the  world  like  Goethe's  Mephistopheles,  nor  like 
Milton's  Fallen  Cherub,  whose 

"  Form  had  not  yet  lost 
All  her  original  brightness,  nor  appeared 
Less  than  archangel  ruined,  or  excess 
Of  glory  obscured  ;  " 

but  is  a  three-headed  monster  of  loathly  ugliness,  with  faces  yellow  with  envy, 
crimson  with  rage,  and  black  with  ignorance  ;  not  haughty,  splendid,  defiant,  but 
foul  and  loathly  as  sin  itself. 


PETRARCH 


25 


PETRARCH 


By  Alice  King 


(i  304-1 374) 

IT  was  in  the  days  of  civil  strife  in  Florence. 
The  Republic,  like  the  fickle  mistress  that  she 
was,  was  stripping  and  turning  out  of  doors  her 
best  servants,  and  was  petting  and  clothing  with 
honor  her  worst  ones.  Among  those  who,  driven 
by  the  decree  of  banishment,  hurried  out  of  the 
city's  southern  gate  were  the  parents  of  Fran- 
cesco Petrarch.  They  retired  to  the  little  town  of 
Arezzo,  and  there  he  was  born  in  1 304,  soon  af- 
ter their  banishment.  As  she  looked  at  her  boy, 
his  mother,  Eletta,  very  likely  mourned  to  think 
that  he  would  not  be  able  in  after  life  to  boast  of 
being  a  native  of  fair  Florence.  She  did  not 
know  that  in  future  ages  Florence  was  to  count 
it  among  her  highest  distinctions  that  this  child 
was  of  Florentine  race. 
Francesco  was  hardly  freed  from  his  swaddling-clothes  when  his  father,  with 
that  restlessness  peculiar  to  exiles,  removed  the  whole  family  from  Arezzo  to 
Pisa.  There  they  stayed  for  about  two  years  ;  and  the  little  fellow's  first  totter- 
ing, baby  footsteps  were  traced  on  the  banks  of  the  Arno.  When  he  was  three 
the  decree  of  banishment  was,  through  the  influence  of  friends  in  Florence,  re- 
voked toward  the  Petrarch  family,  as  far  as  Eletta  and  her  son  were  concerned, 
and  a  part  of  their  property  was  restored  to  them.  The  father  was  glad  to  secure 
to  his  dear  ones  a  safer  and  more  comfortable  home  than  he  could  find  for 
them  in  his  wanderings  ;  and  Eletta,  though  she  wept  at  parting  from  her  hus- 
band, smiled  again  when  relations  and  old  familiar  companions  crowded  round 
her  to  admire  her  gallant  boy. 

She  did  not,  however,  stay  long  in  the  town.  She  withdrew  to  Ancisa,  a  vil- 
lage about  fourteen  miles  from  Florence,  and  settled  there  on  a  small  estate  be- 
longing to  her  husband.  This  she  did  partly,  perhaps,  to  keep  down  her  ex- 
penses, and  partly,  perhaps,  to  devote  herself  more  entirely  to  her  son.  Here 
his  mother,  who  must  have  been  a  clever  woman  in  her  way,  breathed  into  the 
boy  Petrarch  that  high  religious  feeling  which  strengthened  his  whole  life,  and 
led  him  up  the  first  steps  of  the  ladder  of  knowledge  ;  and  here  he  acquired  that 
taste  for  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  country,  and  that  love  of  its  quiet  which 
clung  to  him  till  the  end  of  his  days.  The  song  of  the  nightingale,  the  whisper 
of  the  wind,  the  murmur  of  the  stream,  all  re-echo  constantly  through  his  verse  ; 


26  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

and  even  when  he  is  most  rapturous  about  Laura's  beauty,  he  will  often  pause  to 
tell  of  the  grass  and  flowers  on  which  she  treads. 

No  doubt,  also,  it  was  through  the  healthy  out-door  life  which  he  led  as  a 
child  at  Ancisa  that  he  gained  the  physical  strength  which  afterward  enabled  him 
to  become  one  of  the  best  horsemen  and  swordsmen  of  that  day  of  bold  riding 
and  hard  fighting.  Eletta  at  that  time  worked  well  and  wisely  for  both  the  body 
and  mind  of  the  future  poet. 

But  the  mother  and  son  were  not  to  stay  always  in  that  quiet  retreat.  After 
some  time  the  elder  Petrarch,  finding  that  he  could  not  get  permission  to  return 
to  Florence,  sent  for  his  wife  and  boy,  and  they  went  all  together  to  Avignon, 
where  they  settled. 

Proud  of  his  son's  talents,  the  elder  Petrarch  chalked  out  for  him  a  grand 
career  as  an  advocate,  which  was  to  end  in  the  judge's  ermine.  He  therefore 
sent  Francesco  to  study  law,  first  at  Montpellier,  and  then  at  Bologna. 

When  Petrarch  was  twenty-tvvo  both  his  parents  died.  Soon  after  that  he 
joyfully  threw  away  his  law-books,  and  resolved  to  live  for  literature,  and  litera- 
ture alone.  He, went  back  to  Avignon.  But  the  ways  of  the  town  were  not 
much  to  his  taste,  and  its  whirl  and  noise  distracted  his  mind.  He  therefore 
spent  part  of  the  fortune  inherited  from  his  father  in  buying  a  small  estate  at 
Val  Chiusa,  a  pretty,  quiet  nook  some  miles  from  Avignon.  Thither  he  retired, 
and  spent  his  time  with  his  pen  and  his  books,  only  now  and  then  seeing  a  few 
friends  who  came  out  from  the  town  to  visit  him. 

The  young  man  was  not,  however,  always  satisfied  with  this  monotonous  way 
of  life.  About  this  period  he  took  a  long  journey,  in  which  he  saw  many  of  the 
European  capitals,  and  formed,  among  the  learned  of  foreign  lands,  friendships 
which  he  afterward  kept  up  through  constant  correspondence.  The  world 
already  began  to  speak  of  Petrarch  as  a  rising  man  of  letters. 

One  Good  Friday  he  was  in  the  Church  of  Santa  Chiara,  at  Avignon.  There 
he  saw  a  face  which  made  him  forget  his  prayers  ;  a  face  from  which  the  dark 
eyes  of  the  South  looked  forth,  though  the  bright  hair  of  the  North  waved 
around  it ;  a  face  which  somehow  exactly  fitted  into  the  niche  of  his  ideal ;  a  face 
which  was  to  stamp  itself  upon  his  verse  for  all  ages  and  for  all  lands.  Petrarch 
had  fixed  his  first  look  on  Laura. 

Afterward  he  got  to  know  her  personally,  and  they  often  met  in  society.  Of 
Laura  herself  nothing  certain  is  known,  except  that  her  maiden  name  was  Noves 
and  she  lived  in  Avignon.  Some  writers  say  that  she  always  remained  single,  in 
her  father's  house,  and  some  that  she  married  and  had  many  children.  There  are 
a  few  pictures  of  her,  for  the  authenticity  of  which  it  is  impossible  to  answer. 
They  are  all  handsome,  and  remarkable  for  an  almost  nun-like  shyness  and  sweet- 
ness of  expression.  She  was  certainly  a  woman  of  refined  taste  and  cultivated 
mind,  and  at  a  time  when  female  modesty  was  the  only  rare  adornment  of  the 
fair  sex  in  Avignon,  her  character  was  as  stainless  as  the  first  snow-flake  which 
fell  on  the  summit  of  the  Estrelles.  The  connection  between  Petrarch  and  Laura 
seems  to  our  modern  ideas  a  very  singular  one. 


PETRARCH  27 

To  explain  the  position  in  which  they  stood  to  each  other,  we  must  turn  to 
the  manners  and  customs  of  their  age  and  country.  Partly,  perhaps,  through  the 
great  reverence  paid  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  to  the  Virgin  Mary  and 
other  female  saints,  a  sort  of  woman  worship  had,  in  the  thirteenth  century, 
spread  through  the  south  of  Christendom.  It  was  no  unusual  thing  for  a  knight 
or  a  troubadour  to  select  a  certain  lady,  celebrate  her  in  his  songs,  call  on  her  name 
in  the  hour  of  danger,  and  wear  her  color  in  battle.  The  adored  or  the  adorer 
might  be  either  of  them  married — that  made  no  difference  ;  and  the  tender  litany 
would  sometimes  run  on  for  years,  long  after  the  idol's  hair  was  silvered  and  her 
form  more  remarkable  for  plumpness  than  grace. 

Homage  of  this  sort  did  not  at  all  hurt  the  reputation  of  her  to  whom  it  was 
paid  ;  not  even  her  husband  and  children  respected  her  the  less  for  it.  Some 
distinguished  ladies  had  many  devotees  of  this  kind.  On  her  side,  the  woman 
professed  herself  to  have  for  her  worshipper  an  equable,  cordial  feeling,  which 
never  went  beyond  sisterly  friendship.  Whether  these  platonic  attachments  ever 
slid  into  something  warmer  we  cannot  say.  The  history  of  the  time  gives  us  no 
examples  of  such  being  the  case. 

As  for  Petrarch,  Laura's  beauty  and  the  graces  of  her  mind  first  awoke  with- 
in him  a  romantic  sentiment,  which,  according  to  the  fashion  of  his  brethren  the 
troubadours,  he  at  once  began  publicly  to  proclaim  in  his  verse.  . 

By  degrees,  through  his  thoughts  constantly  dwelling  on  her,  his  glorious 
genius  created  out  of  Laura  Noves  an  ideal  being  who  was  woven  into  his 
deepest  feelings,  and  his  most  aerial  fancies,  and  his  highest  aspirations.  What 
mattered  it  to  him  that  the  real  Laura  as  years  went  on  grew  middle-aged  and 
changed  ?  His  own  Laura  was  gifted  with  immortal  youth.  Even  after  her 
death  his  imagination  was  still  filled  with  her ;  and  the  sweet  cadences  in  which 
he  mourns  her,  and  the  more  exalted  strains  in  which  he  follows  her  to  her  home 
above,  will  always  be  regarded  by  his  readers  as  some  of  the  most  precious  gems 
he  has  left  them. 

But  Laura  was  not  the  poet's  only  theme.  Love  of  his  country  was  prob- 
ably Petrarch's  strongest  passion.  Italy  was  then  a  complete  patchwork  of 
small  states,  and  it  was  the  dream  of  Petrarch's  whole  life  to  see  the  Peninsula 
united  from  the  Alps  to  Spartivento.  In  words  burning  as  the  summer  suns 
which  shine  upon  his  native  land,  and  powerful  as  the  sudden  storms  which  some- 
times sweep  over  her  shores,  he  spoke  out  this  great  longing  of  his  life.  He  was 
also  the  author  of  many  Latin  poems,  which  were  held  in  even  higher  honor  than 
his  writings  in  Italian.  One  of  these  Latin  poems — that  on  Scipio  Africanus — 
was  a  great  favorite  among  his  contemporaries,  but  to  us  it  is  the  coldest  and 
stiffest  of  his  works. 

Petrarch's  fame  went  on  steadily  increasing,  until  at  thirty-seven  he  was  uni- 
versally acknowledged  as  the  first  poet  of  the  period.  When  he  had  reached 
that  age,  there  came  to  his  quiet  little  home  at  Val  Chiusa  two  messengers  from 
two  great  European  cities — namely,  Rome  and  Paris — each  of  which  begged  him 
to  accept  the  laureate's  crown  within  its  walls.     The  true  Italian  could  not  long 


28  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

doubt  which  offer  he  should  choose.  The  Paris  invitation  was  courteously  but 
immediatel)^  refused,  and  proudly  and  gratefully  Petrarch  hastened  to  Rome. 

The  act  of  receiving  the  crown  of  a  poet  laureate  was,  in  those  days  of  mag- 
nificent ceremonials,  attended  with  much  really  regal  pomp.  Dressed  in  a  robe 
of  purple  velvet  glittering  with  jewels,  such  as  suited  the  taste  for  splendor  of 
the  time,  and  such  as  in  truth  well  befitted  a  literary  prince,  Petrarch  was  con- 
ducted with  much  public  state  through  Rome  to  the  Capitol,  where  he  was  thrice 
crowned  :  once  with  laurel,  once  with  ivy,  and  once  with  myrtle.  The  laurel 
meant  glory  ;  the  ivy  signified  the  lasting  fame  which  should  attend  his  work  ; 
the  myrtle  was  the  lawful  right  of  Laura's  poet. 

The  Italian  princes  vied  with  each  other  in  trying  to  get  Petrarch  to  their 
courts,  and  in  heaping  favors  upon  him.  He  visited  nearly  all  of  them  in  turn. 
The  life  of  a  palace  was  perhaps  not  much  more  to  Petrarch's  taste  than  the  life 
of  a  great  city.  But  he  was  too  much  a  man  of  the  world  not  to  be  gratified  by 
these  honors,  and  besides,  through  the  intimacy  which  he  thus  gained  with  the 
chief  men  of  his  country,  he  was  able  to  work  better  toward  his  darling  object, 
the  unity  of  Italy.  Many  remarkable  persons  are  briefly  mixed  up  with  the 
story  of  the  poet  in  these  days  of  his  wanderings  from  city  to  city.  We  catch  a 
glimpse  of  him  being  introduced  by  the  pope  to  the  German  emperor  Charles 
IV.  at  Avignon.  We  also  see  him  grasping  for  a  moment  the  hand  of  a  man 
who,  although  no  royal  blood  runs  in  his  veins,  looks  in  truth  like  a  king  among 
his  fellows — Rienzi,  the  tribune. 

The  middle  of  Petrarch's  life  was  darkened  by  the  loss  of  many  friends. 
Laura  died,  struck  down  by  the  plague  which  raged  in  Avignon,  and  Petrarch, 
who,  without  countinof  all  the  ideal  romance  with  which  he  had  surrounded  her, 
had  for  her  a  strong,  warm  friendship,  mourned  her  very  deeply.  Several  other 
friends  of  his  youth  at  this  time  also  passed  away  from  the  earth.  The  heart 
of  the  poet  was  cruelly  wounded  by  these  losses,  but  he  sought  comfort  in  work 
and  study,  and  devoted  himself  more  entirely  to  the  interests  of  his  country. 

As  years  went  on  the  poet's  love  of  a  country  life  revived.  He  had  done  his 
utmost  for  Italy,  but  the  result  of  that  utmost  had  been  nothing.  The  rest  of 
his  days  should  be  given  alone  to  literature.  He  therefore  gave  up  frequenting 
courts,  and  bought  a  little  estate  at  Arqua,  a  village  among  the  Lombard  hills, 
whither  he  retired.  We  like  to  fancy  him  in  this  pleasant  home  of  his  age,  with 
his  tall,  lithe  figure  still  unbent,  his  face,  though  careworn,  still  shining  with  in- 
tellectual light,  his  hand  busy  with  the  pen.  Petrarch  always  loved  the  little  ele- 
gancies of  life,  and  no  doubt,  even  in  this  country  retreat,  we  should  have  seen 
him  (unlike  most  of  the  literary  brotherhood,  whose  very  livery  is  untidiness) 
neatly  dressed,  and  surrounded  by  as  many  pretty  knick-knacks  as  the  fourteenth 
century  could  afford.  We  should  not  ever  have  found  his  table  very  splendidly 
spread.  Eletta's  son  kept  the  simple  tastes  acquired  at  Ancisa  at  her  side,  and 
liked  best  a  diet  of  fruit  and  vegetables. 

Once  the  call  of  friendship  drew  him  out  of  his  solitude  ;  Carrara,  the  Prince 
of   Padua,  who  had  been  for  many  years  the  poet's  friend   and  patron,  had  got 


PETRARCH    AND    LAURA    INTRODUCED    TO    THE    EMPEROR    AT    AVIGNON 

BY 

VACSLAV    BROZIK 


28 


AT'T' 


doubt  which  offc 
immediatclv  rcf' 

The 
nificent  l 

of  pr-  ' 
the  I. 
duct 


-uurtcuusiy  uut 

^  to  T\oiTie. 

of  mag- 
n  a  robe 

!r.r  of 


id  orrai 

I  poet  laui 
:ch  real: 
rls,  such  a;>  ? 
i  befitted  a  lite,  .,n- 

!  hrough  Rome  to  the  C 
(  :ce  with  ivy,  and  one.  i 

;  icd  the  lasting  fame  whicii  ^ 

t,  ight  of  Laura's  poet.  .' 

ied  with  each  other  in  trying  to  get  Petrarch  to  their 
t  L-apiag  favors  upon  him.     He  visited  nearly  all  of  them  in  turn, 

'i  iJL  luv,  .'1  a  palace  was  perhaps  not  much  more  to  Petrarch's  taste  than  the  life 
of  a  great  city.  But  he  was  too  much  a  man  of  the  world  not  to  be  gratified  by 
these  honors,  and  besides,  through  the  intimacy  which  he  thus  gained  with  the 
chief  men  of  to'  work  better  toward  his  darling  object, 

th-    ■'-'•^'^   ■  ■  ■   .—-..•.-   •— 


;.,n, 


IV.  at  Avigaun. 

,,-1,. .    ,1/1..  .,,.,-1,  ,,,-. 


a  laoji: 
iiks  in  ; 


no^oi7A  TA  aoaaiMa  sht  ot  aaoaaoaTMi  ajiuaj  qma  Hoa.AaTai 

Laura  died,  struck  ■  „     „                                   id  Petrarch, 

who,  without  counthij^  .i..  -^.uiounded  her, 

had  for  her  a  strong,  warm  .     Several  other 

friends  of  his  youth  at  this  t  a  the  earth.     The  heart 


of  the  1' 

d  by  these  losscb,  but 

he  sought  comfort  in  work 

and  '^t'   ' 

A 

'-"^re  entirely  to  the  interests  <"-'"  ^''^  ■■•'•ntry. 
e  of  a  countn'  life  revived.                     lonr  lii-^ 

utmost  for  Ital 

Iiad  been  m 

his  (1          ■      ■  ■ 

c.      He  th<^ 

' 

courr 

:   iw    •. 

whitl. 

.'•V  him  in  • 

age,  with 

his  tall,  lithe  hg^ 
t  "       ■   •]  light,  his  : 

though 

ling  with  in- 
he  little  ele- 

if    lifr-     riP'l 

'd  have  seen 

nd  sun-' 

untidiness) 
-  the  fourteenth 

.  splendidly 

1- *■  "•■ 

T  <;i(l(     .iru! 

li'. 

and  v< 

(1 

rara,  the  Prince 

of   Faaui,  ■. 

•  r   man)    )  cars  uic   pi  ■ 

viM  patron,  had  got 

GEOFFREY    CHAUCER 


29 


into  a  mess  with  the  Venetian  Republic,  and  sent  for  Petrarch  to  get  him  out  of  it. 
This  the  poet's  skill  and  eloquence  very  soon  did,  and  then  he  went  back  to  Arqua. 
Florence  the  Fair  had  a  peculiar  way  of  her  own  of  doing  tardy  justice  to  her 
children.  She  wept  over  Dante's  grave,  and  after  many  years  she  begged  Pe- 
trarch to  come  and  live  in  the  home  of  his  fathers,  within  her  walls.  But  the 
poet  did  not  go.  He  had  grown  to  think  all  Italy  his  country,  rather  than  one 
citv.  Besides,  a  brighter  home  was  beginning  to  open  on  the  old  man's  view. 
Eletta  and  Laura  and  many  other  dear  ones  waited  for  him  there,  and  when  he 
had  been  seventy  years  upon  earth  God  called  him  to  join  them. 


GEOFFREY   CHAUCER 


By  Alice  King 


I 


(1328-1400) 

■  T  is  very  difficult  to  get  even  a  correct  outline  of 
the  figure  of  Geoffrey  Chaucer.  We  think  we 
have  a  perfect  view  of  him  ;  we  congratulate  our- 
selves upon  knowing  the  man  just  as  he  moved  and 
spoke  among  his  contemporaries  ;  when  suddenly 
we  discover  that  we  are  looking  at  a  puppet  cun- 
ningly dressed  up  by  some  imaginative  biographer. 
We  believe  that  we  have  got  him  into  a  good  his- 
torical light,  when  all  at  once  a  doubt  whether  he 
was  or  was  not  an  actor  in  such  and  such  events 
throws  him  again  into  shadow.  We  try  to  conjure 
him  up,  but  he  comes  in  so  many  forms  that  we 
grow  utterly  bewildered.  Yet,  notwithstanding  all 
this,  we  reverence  him  so  deeply  and  love  him  so  dearly,  that  we  cannot  help 
striving  to  gain  some  idea  of  what  he  was  like. 

The  dates  given  of  Chaucer's  birth  are  very  varied,  and  range  from  1328  to 
1348.  Probably  some  year  midway  between  these  two  may  be  the  right  one. 
The  accounts  of  his  parentage  are  just  as  uncertain.  Some  give  him  a  vintner  for 
a  father,  some  a  merchant,  and  some  a  knight.  In  our  opinion  the  former  of 
these  is  the  most  likely  origin  for  Geoffrey  Chaucer.  His  rich  but  broad  humor 
seems  as  if  it  must  have  sprung  from  the  merry,  vigorous  heart  of  the  common 
people,  and  the  variety  of  characters  depicted  in  the  "Canterbury  Tales"  proves 
that  he  must  have  mixed  with  all  sorts  of  men  and  women,  both  high  and  low. 
In  after-life  he  was  familiar  with  courts,  and  knights,  and  ladies  ;  but  we  fancy 
that  in  his  youth  he  must  have  known  intimately  the  cook,  the  wife  of  Bath,  and 
the  yeoman. 


30  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

Whoever  Chaucer's  father  may  have  been,  he  certainly  gave  him  a  very  hberal 
education.  His  writings  show  that  Chaucer  was  a  good  scholar,  both  in  the 
classics  and  in  divinity,  and  that,  according  to  the  ideas  of  the  fourteenth  century, 
he  was  far  advanced  in  astronomy  and  the  other  sciences.  Tradition  says  that  he 
studied  at  both  Cambridge  and  Oxford.  This  is  not  at  all  unlikely,  for  we  find 
that  reading  young  men  of  that  day  did  sometimes  really  go  from  one  university 
to  the  other.  When  he  had  finished  his  education  in  England,  Chaucer  went  to 
Paris.  There  he  may  have  gained  that  grace  of  carriage  and  manner  for  which 
he  is  said  to  have  been  always  so  remarkable. 

We  can  picture  to  ourselves  the  handsome,  free-spirited  young  fellow,  with 
his  ruddy  Saxon  face  and  ready  Saxon  wit,  in  the  joyous  capital  of  fair  France  ; 
now  whispering  pretty  nothings  into  the  dainty  ear  of  some  dark-eyed  grisette, 
now  going  home  through  the  streets  at  daybreak,  with  a  band  of  merry  com- 
panions, shouting  out  in  questionable  French  a  jolly  chorus ;  and  now  riding 
gayly  forth  to  see  how  in  a  foreign  land  they  understood  the  art  of  woodcraft. 
No  doubt  he  sowed  at  this  period  a  tolerable  crop  of  wild  oats,  but  at  the  same 
time  he  began  to  plant  his  laurels.  He  wrote  very  early  his  first  long  poem, 
"The  Court  of  Love."  This,  like  most  of  his  earlier  writings,  is  full  of  allegory 
and  imagery.  Though  very  gorgeous  in  coloring,  and  often  literally  overflowing 
with  rich  fancy,  these  first  poems  are  rather  wanting  in  the  human  interest  of  the 
"Canterbury  Tales." 

On  his  return  to  England  Chaucer  for  a  little  while  studied  law.  To  judge 
by  the  only  incident  related  of  his  legal  life,  he  by  no  means  entirely  buried  him- 
self among  musty  old  documents  and  ponderous  volumes. 

One  afternoon,  as  young  Chaucer  was  passing  through  the  Temple  with  his 
temper  made  a  little  more  irritable  than  usual,  it  may  be  by  the  heat  of  the  sun, 
it  may  be  by  an  additional  cup  of  sack,  it  may  be  by  the  thought  of  an  especially 
stiff  piece  of  reading  which  was  before  him — it  may  be  all  three  together — he  met 
a  friar.  The  priest  came  along  with  easy  step  and  shining,  rosy  face,  rejoicing  at 
once  in  the  odor  of  sanctity  and  of  a  good  dinner.  The  sight  of  this  placidly 
lazy  and  provokingly  comfortable  churchman  had  upon  the  man  of  law  the  same 
effect  that  the  sight  of  a  sleek  tabby  has  upon  a  terrier.  In  tvv^o  minutes  Master 
Geoffrey  has  jostled  against  the  friar  and  contrived  to  pick  a  quarrel  with  him. 
Hereupon  followed  a  lively  game  at  single-stick,  in  which,  no  doubt,  Chaucer's 
fellow-students  backed  loudly  the  law  against  the  church.  At  first  the  friar 
showed  himself  no  mean  hand  with  the  quarter-staff.  But  by  degrees  he  began 
to  give  way  before  his  more  active  antagonist,  and  when  the  fray  was  over  the 
churchman  had  learned  in  good  earnest  what  was  meant  by  the  strong  arm  of 
the  law  ;  young  Chaucer  was,  however,  afterward  punished  for  his  misdeed,  by 
being  brought  before  a  magistrate,  reprimanded,  and  fined  as  a  breaker  of  the 
peace  ;  all  of  which  could  not  exactly  have  added  to  the  respectability  of  the  legal 
brotherhood.  Soon  after  this  Chaucer  gave  up  the  law,  which  was,  in  truth,  en- 
tirely unsuited  to  him. 

By  some  means,  perhaps  through  the  good  ofifices  of  a  friend,  he  now  con- 


GEOFFREY    CHAUCER  31 

trived  to  get  introduced  at  Court,  where  his  winning  face  and  tongue  quickly 
brought  him  into  favor  with  the  royal  family.  John  of  Gaunt,  King  Edward's 
third  son,  who  was  then  not  the  "time-honored  Lancaster"  of  after-days,  but  a 
gay  young  prince,  took  a  special  fancy  to  Chaucer.  Prince  and  subject  were, 
without  doubt,  well  agreed  in  the  way  they  liked  to  amuse  themselves,  and  prob- 
ably they  carried  on  many  a  wild  frolic  together.  This  early  intimacy  ripened 
into  a  solid  friendship,  which  lasted  throughout  their  lives. 

After  a  while  John  of  Gaunt  determined  to  become  a  steady  married  man. 
A  rich  bride  was  found  for  him  in  Blanche,  the  heiress  of  Lancaster.  She  was  a 
gentle  lady,  who  yielded  up  readily  to  her  princely  husband  the  revenues  and  the 
other  privileges  which  were  hers  as  a  countess  in  her  own  right ;  and  who,  after 
a  few  years  of  quiet  married  life,  spent  chiefly  at  her  northern  castle,  passed 
away  softly  from  the  earth,  without  dreaming  that  her  son  was  to  be  the  future 
king  of  England,  and  that  her  family  title  was  in  after-days  to  become  the  watch- 
word on  many  a  bloody  field  of  civil  strife. 

In  honor  of  Prince  John's  marriage,  Chaucer  wrote  "The  Parliament  of 
Fowls,"  and  in  memory  of  Blanche's  death  "The  Book  of  the  Duchess."  Chau- 
cer seems  to  have  had  a  true  reverence  and  affection  for  the  sweet  household 
virtues  and  the  wifely  truth  of  this  lady.  The  remembrance  of  her  may  perhaps 
have  first  suggested  to  him  the  image  of  Griselda.  These  two  poems,  connected 
as  they  were  with  the  royal  family,  confirmed  Chaucer's  reputation  as  a  writer  of 
verse  ;  and  men  and  women  began  to  point  him  out  to  each  other  and  talk  about 
him.  In  those  days,  however,  it  was  quite  impossible  for  any  man  to  make  lit- 
erature his  profession,  and  all  his  life,  therefore,  he  could  only  take  poetry  as  the 
business  of  his  leisure  hours.  Then,  no  doubt,  he  really  worked  at  it  more  than  at 
the  employment  by  which  he  lived  ;  and  no  doubt,  also,  as  he  went  about  through 
the  world,  he  was  always  learning  something  for  his  art.  If  this  had  not  been  the 
case,  the  name  of  Chaucer  would  not  be  what  it  now  is  in  English  literature. 

At  about  this  period  Edward  the  Third  set  off  for  one  of  his  many  warlike 
expeditions  into  France.  Young  Chaucer,  who  was  ready  for  everything,  and 
who  perhaps  thought  he  should  like  to  see  a  little  of  a  soldier's  life,  entered  the 
army  and  followed  the  king. 

But  the  young  soldier's  experiences  were  not  to  be  all  of  nights  spent  beneath 
clear  starlit  skies,  and  cheery  communing  with  his  comrades,  and  the  eager  glow 
of  battle.     Through  an  unlucky  chance  of  war  Chaucer  was  taken  prisoner. 

His  prepossessing  manners,  and  his  knowledge  of  the  French  language  and 
customs,  gained  during  his  stay  in  Paris  probably,  made  his  captivity  a  very  easy 
one.  But  he  had  to  sit  still  with  folded  hands  while  his  countrymen  were  fight- 
ing, and  in  this  season  of  forced  inactivity  he  had  time  to  repent  past  follies  and 
to  make  good  resolves  for  the  future.  At  length,  through  an  exchange  of  pris- 
oners, the  poet  was  set  free.  After  that  he  never  tried  a  soldier's  life  again,  hav- 
ing most  likely  had  quite  enough  of  it. 

Soon  after  his  return  to  England,  he  got  an  appointment  about  the  Court 
which  brought  him  a  settled  income.      He  now  began  to  think  of  making  him- 


32  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

self  a  home.  Among  those  who  followed  in  the  train  of  Edward's  queen,  Phi- 
lippa,  when  she  came  to  England,  were  a  certain  knight  of  Hainault,  called  Roet, 
and  his  two  little  daughters.  These  children  were  now  grown  up  into  very 
comelv  young  women.  One,  Catherine,  had  married  an  English  gentleman, 
named  Swynford.  The  other,  Philippa,  was  maid  of  honor  to  the  queen.  Ac- 
cording to  Fanny  Burney,  a  maid  of  honor  has  quite  enough  to  do  in  the  labors 
of  dressing  her  mistress  and  herself ;  yet  this  industrious  damsel,  Philippa  Roet, 
found  spare  time  sufficient  (between  the  business  of  clasping  on  jewels  and  ar- 
ranging gracefully  royal  mantles,  and  contriving  how  to  make  an  old  dress  look 
like  new)  to  fall  in  love  with  Geoffrey  Chaucer,  and,  what  was  more,  to  make 
the  poet  desperately  in  love  with  herself. 

There  being  no  impediment  in  the  way,  and  the  king  and  queen  forwarding 
the  matter,  Chaucer  and  his  Philippa  were  soon  made  man  and  wife.  Not  long 
after  their  marriage  they  had  the  misfortune  to  lose  their  generous  mistress,  the 
queen.  Edward  the  Third,  however,  still  treated  Chaucer  with  favor.  He  made 
him  one  of  the  valets  of  his  bed-chamber,  and  also  gave  him  a  high  office  in  the 
customs.  The  two  halves  of  his  life  must  now  have  been  strangely  different. 
One  was  spent  among  velvet  doublets,  and  waving  plumes,  and  gilded  armor, 
and  all  the  many  splendid  vanities  of  a  court  ;  the  other  among  heavy  ledgers, 
and  hard-handed  sea  captains,  and  casks  of  coarse  spirit,  and  the  most  vulgar 
realities  of  a  commonplace  life.  No  wonder  that  a  man  whose  time  was  passed 
among  such  contrasts  should  write  by  turns  of  a  noble  knight  and  a  miller. 

Several  times  King  Edward  sent  Chaucer  abroad  on  political  missions.  This 
is  a  great  proof  of  the  high  esteem  in  which  his  master  held  him.  In  one  of 
these  journeys  he  went  into  Italy  and  saw  the  Mediterranean  wash  the  marble 
quays  of  Genoa,  and  the  stately  towers  of  fair  Florence  raise  themselves  toward 
the  blue  sky.  On  this  occasion,  some  of  his  biographers  think,  he  visited  Pe- 
trarch. This  notion  is,  however,  only  founded  on  a  passage  in  the  "  Canterbury 
Tales  ;  "  it  is  therefore  our  opinion  that  Chaucer,  anxious  as  he  must  have  been 
to  despatch  quickly  the  king's  business,  would  hardly  have  spared  time  to  go  to 
Arqua,  where  Petrarch  then  lived,  and  that  those  who  draw  from  the  passage  in 
question  the  inference  that  the  two  great  poets  must  have  met,  are,  as  blundering 
critics  often  do,  confounding  the  author  with  his  characters.  One  of  Chaucer's 
personages  says  that  he  heard  a  story  he  is  about  to  tell  from  Petrarch  ;  but  that 
is  no  reason  for  concluding  that  Chaucer  so  heard  it  himself. 

Rich  must  have  been  the  dramatic  anecdote  and  lively  description  which 
Chaucer  brought  home  from  these  journeys.  In  those  days  of  little  travelling, 
an  account  of  foreign  countries  must  have  had  freshness  and  interest,  even  when 
it  came  from  a  commonplace  man.  What,  then,  must  it  have  been  on  the  lips 
of  Chaucer  ? 

In  one  of  his  absences,  Chaucer's  brother-poet,  Gower,  filled  for  him  his  post 
at  Court.  This  is  a  delightful  proof  of  the  friendship  which  must  have  existed 
between  the  two.  Many  a  ramble  must  they  have  taken  together  through  the 
green  fields  in  summer  time,  and  many  a  flask  of  canary  must  have  passed  be- 


GEOFFREY    CHAUCER  33 

tween  them  on  winter  evenings.  Could  tiie  diary  of  Piiilippa  Chaucer  have 
been  published  after  her  death,  as  most  certainly  it  would  have  been  in  this  cen- 
tury, it  would  doubtless  have  contained  conversations  as  interesting  as  those  in 
the  pages  of  Boswell. 

Chaucer  constantly  received  proofs  of  King  Edward's  favor.  At  one  time  a 
pitcher  of  wine  was  sent  daily  to  the  poet  by  his  sovereign,  and  when  this  was 
discontinued,  he  was  given  an  equivalent  in  money.  Late  in  life  a  close  connec- 
tion was  formed  between  the  families  of  Chaucer  and  of  his  old  friend,  John  of 
Gaunt,  Duke  of  Lancaster.  Philippa  Chaucer's  sister,  Catherine  Swynford,  who 
became  early  a  widow,  entered  the  Duke  of  Lancaster's  household  as  governess 
to  the  children  of  his  first  duchess. 

The  poet's  own  domestic  life  seems  to  have  been  very  happy.  Philippa  ap- 
pears to  have  been  to  him  a  bold  and  faithful  helpmate  in  his  journey  through 
this  world  ;  and  we  believe  that,  could  we  trace  closely  her  household  influence, 
we  should  find  that  she  first  began  to  work  the  golden  thread  of  religion  into  his 
life  ;  for,  notwithstanding  that  great  coarseness  which  unluckil)^  makes  the 
"Canterbury  Tales"  unavailable  as  a  book  for  family  reading,  but  which  we  must 
chiefl}^  impute  to  the  customs  of  the  age,  Chaucer  was,  in  the  main,  a  religious 
man,  and  his  poems  are,  in  the  main,  religious  poems.  Chaucer  was  certainly  a 
good  father,  and  attended  as  far  as  he  could  to  the  education  of  his  boys.  His 
"  Astrolabe,"  a  work  on  astronomy,  was  written  for  his  little  Lewis,  who  was 
probably  his  father's  pet. 

On  Richard  II.  coming  to  the  throne,  Chaucer  got  somewhat  into  trouble, 
through  his  leaning  toward  the  side  of  the  people  in  the  civil  broils  which  dis- 
turbed the  early  part  of  that  king's  reign.  Some  of  the  poet's  biographers  say 
he  was  so  violent  in  his  partisanship  that  he  was  obliged  to  fly  from  the  wrath  of 
government  to  Holland  ;  but  this  is  most  decidedly  a  myth.  Chaucer's  nature 
was  not  of  that  stuff  of  which  martyrs  are  made.  He  certainly,  it  is  true,  in- 
clined to  the  popular  cause.  His  friend  and  patron,  the  Duke  of  Lancaster,  was 
the  chief  leader  of  the  liberal  party.  No  doubt  the  poet  disliked  tyranny  in  any 
form,  and  no  doubt  he  wished  to  see  the  Church  of  Rome  purged  from  her  worst 
abuses.  Very  likely,  also,  he  may  have  sometimes  gone  privately  to  hear  Wick- 
liffe  preach,  and  his  heart  may  have  been  drawn  toward  the  new  doctrines.  But 
most  assuredly  he  showed  his  feelings  and  opinions  in  a  very  mild,  cautious  way, 
and  the  only  sign  of  the  king's  displeasure  was  a  temporary  stoppage  of  the  pen- 
sion which  Chaucer  had  for  some  years  received. 

This  must  have  made  Chaucer  and  his  Philippa,  in  the  decline  of  life,  know 
what  straitened  means  were  like ;  but  doubtless  cheery  wit  and  merry  smiles 
made  home  music  and  home  light  around  the  scantily  spread  table.  Afterward, 
however,  the  pension  was  restored. 

Of  the  "  Canterbury  Tales,"  that  vast  storehouse  of  humor,  of  pathos,  of  fancy, 
and  of  strong,  manly  common  sense,  we  have  no  place  to  speak  here.  They  were 
the  work  of  his  ripened  powers  in  middle  age,  and  probably  the  old  man  was  still 
busy  with  them  when  he  heard  tiic  whisper  which  called  him  to  his  rest. 

3 


34 


ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 


TOROUATO   TASSO 


(1544-1595) 


T' 


^ORQUATO  Tasso,  bom  at  Sorrento,  March 
II,  1544,  was  the  son  of  Bernardo  Tasso 
by  Portia  de  Rossi,  a  lady  of  a  noble  Neapoli- 
tan family.  His  father  was  a  man  of  some 
note,  both  as  a  political  and  as  a  literary  char- 
acter ;  and  his  poem  "  Amadigi,"  founded  on 
the  well-known  romance  of  Amadis  de  Gaul, 
has  been  preferred  by  one  partial  critic  even  to 
the  "Orlando  Furioso."  Ferrante  Sanseverino, 
Prince  of  Salerno,  chose  him  for  his  secretary, 
and  with  him  and  for  him  Bernardo  shared  all 
the  vicissitudes  of  fortune.  That  prince  hav- 
ing been  deprived  of  his  estates,  and  expelled 
from  the  kingdom  of  Naples  by  the  Court  of 
Spain,  Bernardo  was  involved  in  his  proscrip- 
tion, and  retired  with  him  to  Rome.  Torquato,  then  five  years  old,  remained 
with  his  mother,  who  went  to  reside  with  her  family  in  Naples. 

Bernardo  Tasso  having  lost  all  hopes  of  ever  returning  to  that  capital,  ad- 
vised his  wife  to  retire  with  his  daughter  into  a  nunnery,  and  to  send  Torquato  to 
Rome.  Our  young  poet  suffered  much  in  parting  from  his  mother  and  sister  ; 
but,  fulfilling  the  command  of  his  parents,  he  joined  his  father  in  October,  1554. 
On  this  occasion  he  composed  a  canzone,  in  which  he  compared  himself  to  As- 
canius  escaping  from  Troy  with  his  father  ^neas. 

The  fluctuating  fortunes  of  the  elder  Tasso  caused  Torquato  to  visit  succes- 
sively Bergamo,  the  abode  of  his  paternal  relatives,  and  Pesaro,  where  his  manners 
and  intelligence  made  so  favorable  an  impression,  that  the  Duke  of  Pesaro  chose 
him  for  companion  to  his  son,  then  studying  under  the  celebrated  Corrado,  of 
Mantua.  In  1559,  he  accompanied  his  father  to  Venice,  and  there  perused  the 
best  Italian  authors,  especially  Dante,  Petrarch,  and  Boccaccio.  The  next  year 
he  went  to  the  University  of  Padua,  where,  under  Sperone  Speroni  and  Sigonio, 
he  studied  Aristotle  and  the  critics  ;  and  by  Piccolomini  and  Pandasio  he  was 
taught  the  moral  and  philosophical  doctrines  of  Socrates  and  Plato.  However, 
notwithstanding  his  severer  studies,  Torquato  never  lost  sight  of  his  favorite  art ; 
and  at  the  age  of  seventeen,  in  ten  months,  he  composed  his  "  Rinaldo,"  a  poem 
in  twelve  cantos,  founded  on  the  then  popular  romances  of  Charlemagne  and  his 
paladins.  This  work,  which  was  published  in  1562,  excited  great  admiration, 
and  gave  rise  to  expectations  which  were  justified  by  the  "Jerusalem  Delivered." 
The  plan  of  that  immortal  poem  was  conceived,  according  to  Serassi's  conjecture. 


TORQUATO   TASSO  35 

in  1563,  at  Bologna,  where  Tasso  was  then  prosecuting  his  studies.  The  first 
sketch  of  it  is  still  preserved  in  a  manuscript,  dated  1563,  in  the  Vatican  Library, 
and  printed  at  Venice  in  1 722.  Unfortunately,  while  thus  engaged,  he  was  brought 
into  collision  with  the  civil  authorities,  in  consequence  of  some  satirical  attacks 
on  the  University,  which  were  falsely  attributed  to  him.  The  charge  was  re- 
futed, but  not  until  his  papers  had  been  seized  and  himself  imprisoned.  This  dis- 
o-usted  him  with  Bologna,  and  he  returned  to  Padua  in  1564.  There  he  applied 
all  his  faculties  to  the  accomplishment  of  his  epic  poem  ;  collected  immense  ma- 
terials from  the  chronicles  of  the  Crusades  ;  and  wrote,  to  exercise  his  critical 
powers,  the  "  Discorsi  "  and  the  "  Trattato  sulla  Poesia."  While  thus  engaged, 
the  Cardinal  Luigi  d'Este  appointed  him  a  gentleman  of  his  court.  Speroni  en- 
deavored to  dissuade  the  young  poet  from  accepting  that  office,  by  relating  the 
many  disappointments  which  he  had  himself  experienced  while  engaged  in  a  sim- 
ilar career.  These  remonstrances  were  vain  ;  Tasso  joined  the  cardinal  at  Fer- 
rara  at  the  end  of  October,  1 564,  and  soon  attracted  the  favorable  notice  of  the 
Duke  Alfonso,  brother  of  the  cardinal,  and  of  their  sisters ;  one  of  whom,  the 
celebrated  Eleanora,  is  commonly  supposed  to  have  exercised  a  lasting  and 
unhappy  influence  over  the  poet's  life.  Ferrara  continued  to  be  his  chief  place 
of  abode  till  15 71,  when  he  was  summoned  to  accompany  his  patron  the  car- 
dinal to  France.  The  gayeties  of  Ferrara,  celebrated  in  that  age  for  its  splen- 
dor, did  not  prevent  his  prosecuting  his  poetic  studies  with  zeal ;  for  it  appears 
from  his  will,  quoted  by  Mr.  Stebbing,  that,  at  his  departure  for  France  he  had 
written  a  considerable  portion  of  the  "Jerusalem,"  besides  a  variety  of  minor 
pieces.  His  reputation  was  already  high  at  the  ?ourt  of  France,  where  he  was 
received  by  Charles  IX.  with  distinguished  attention.  But  he  perceived,  or  fan- 
cied that  he  saw,  a  change  in  the  cardinal's  demeanor  toward  him,  and,  impa- 
tient of  neglect,  begged  leave  to  return  to  Italy.  In  1572  he  was  at  Rome 
with  the  Cardinal  Ippolito  d'Este.  In  the  same  year  he  entered  the  service  of 
the  Duke  of  Ferrara,  and  resumed  with  zeal  the  completion  and  correction  of 
the  "  Jerusalem." 

In  1573,  Tasso  wrote  his  beautiful  pastoral  drama  "  Aminta."  This  new  pro- 
duction added  greatly  to  his  reputation.  He  chose  simple  Nature  for  his  model ; 
and  succeeded  admirably  in  the  imitation  of  her.  The  "Jerusalem  Delivered" 
was  completed  in  1575.  Tasso  submitted  it  to  the  criticism  of  the  most  learned 
men  of  that  age.  The  great  confusion  which  prevailed  in  the  remarks  of  his 
critics  caused  him  extraordinary  uneasiness.  To  answer  their  objections,  he 
wrote  the  "  Lettere  Poetiche,"  the  best  key  to  the  true  interpretation  of  his 
poem. 

During  1575,  Tasso  visited  Pavia,  Padua,  Bologna,  and  Rome,  and  in  1576 
returned  to  Ferrara.  His  abode  there  never  was  a  happy  one  ;  for  his  talents, 
celebrity,  and  the  favor  in  which  he  was  held,  raised  up  enemies,  who  showed 
their  spleen  in  petty  underminings  and  annoyances,  to  whicli  the  poet's  suscepti- 
ble temper  lent  a  sting.  He  was  attracted,  however,  by  the  kindness  of  the  duke 
and  the  society  of  the  beautiful  and  accomplished  Eleanora,  the  duke's  sister,  for 


36  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

whom  the  poet  ventured,  it  is  said,  to  declare  an  affection  which,  according  to 
some  historians,  did  not  remain  unrequited.  The  portrait  of  Olinda,  in  the  beau- 
tiful episode  which  relates  her  history,  is  generally  understood  to  have  been  de- 
signed after  this  living  model ;  while  some  have  imagined  that  Tasso  himself  is 
not  less  clearly  pictured  in  the  description  of  her  lover,  Sofronio.  There  was 
also  another  Eleanor,  a  lady  of  the  court  with  whom  the  poet  for  a  while  imag- 
ined himself  in  love.  But  about  this  time,  whether  from  mental  uneasiness,  or 
from  constitutional  causes,  his  conduct  began  to  be  marked  by  a  morbid  irritabil- 
ity allied  to  madness.  The  "Jerusalem"  was  surreptitiously  printed  without 
having  received  the  author's  last  corrections  ;  and  he  entreated  the  duke,  and  all 
his  powerful  friends,  to  prevent  such  an  abuse.  Alfonso  and  the  pope  himself 
endeavored  to  satisfy  Tasso's  demands,  but  with  little  success.  This  circum- 
stance, and  other  partly  real,  partly  imaginary  troubles,  augmented  so  much  his 
natural  melancholy  and  apprehension,  that  he  began  to  think  that  his  enemies 
not  only  persecuted  and  calumniated  him,  but  accused  him  of  great  crimes  ;  he 
even  imagined  that  they  had  the  intention  of  denouncing  his  works  to  the 
Holy  Inquisition.  Under  this  impression  he  presented  himself  to  the  inquis- 
itor of  Bologna ;  and  having  made  a  general  confession,  submitted  his  works 
to  the  examination  of  that  holy  father,  and  begged  and  obtained  his  absolu- 
tion. His  malady,  for  such  we  may  surely  call  it,  was  continually  exasperated 
by  the  arts  of  his  rivals  ;  and  on  one  occasion,  in  the  apartments  of  the  Duch- 
ess of  Urbino,  he  drew  his  sword  on  one  of  her  attendants.  He  was  imme- 
diately arrested,  and  subsequently  sent  to  one  of  the  Duke's  villas,  where  he 
was  kindly  treated  and  supplied  with  medical  advice.  But  his  fancied  injuries 
(for  in  this  case  they  do  not  seem  to  have  been  real)  still  pursued  him  ;  and 
he  fled,  destitute  of  everything,  from  Ferrara,  and  hastened  to  his  sister  Cor- 
nelia, then  living  at  Sorrento.  Her  care  and  tenderness  very  much  soothed  his 
mind  and  improved  his  health  ;  but,  unfortunately,  he  soon  repented  of  his  hasty 
flight,  and  returned  to  Ferrara,  where  his  former  malady  soon  regained  its  pow- 
er. Dissatisfied  with  all  about  him,  he  again  left  that  town  ;  but,  after  having 
wandered  for  more  than  a  year,  he  returned  to  Alfonso,  by  whoni  he  was  re- 
ceived with  indifference  and  contempt.  By  nature  sensitive,  and  much  excited 
by  his  misfortunes,  Tasso  began  to  pour  forth  bitter  invectives  against  the  duke 
and  his  court.  Alfonso  exercised  a  cruel  revenge  ;  for,  instead  of  soothing  the 
unhappy  poet,  he  shut  him  up  as  a  lunatic  in  the  hospital  of  St.  Anne.  Yet, 
strange  to  say,  notwithstanding  his  sufferings,  mental  and  bodily,  for  more  than 
seven  years  in  that  abode  of  misery  and  despair,  his  powers  remained  unbroken, 
his  genius  unimpaired  ;  and  even  there  he  composed  some  pieces,  both  in  prose 
and  v^erse,  which  were  triumphantly  appealed  to  by  his  friends  in  proof  of  his  san- 
ity. To  this  period  we  may  probably  refer  the  "  Veglie,"  or  "  Watches  "  of  Tas- 
so, the  manuscript  of  which  was  discovered  in  the  Ambrosian  Library,  at  Milan, 
toward  the  end  of  the  last  century.  They  are  written  in  prose,  and  express  the 
author's  melancholy  thoughts  in  elegant  and  poetic  language.  The  "Jerusa- 
lem "  had  now  been  published  and  republished  both  in   Italy  and  France,  and 


cc 
O 


O 

5 


o 

CO 


TORQUATO   TASSO  37 

Europe  rang  with  its  praises  ;  yet  the  author  lay  almost  perishing  in  close  con- 
finement, sick,  forlorn,  and  destitute  of  every  comfort. 

In  1548,  Camillo  Pellegrini,  a  Capuan  nobleman,  and  a  great  admirer  of 
Tasso's  genius,  published  a  "  Dialogue  on  Epic  Poetry,"  in  which  he  placed  the 
"Jerusalem"  far  above  the  "Orlando  Furioso."  This  testimony  from  a  man 
of  literary  distinction  caused  a  great  sensation  among  the  friends  and  admirers  of 
Ariosto.  Two  academicians  of  the  Crusca,  Salviati  and  De  Rossi,  attacked  the 
"Jerusalem  "  in  the  name  of  the  academy,  and  assailed  Tasso  and  his  father  in  a 
gross  strain  of  abuse.  From  the  mad-house  Tasso  answered  with  great  modera- 
tion ;  defended  his  father,  his  poem,  and  himself  from  these  groundless  invec- 
tives ;  and  thus  gave  to  the  world  the  best  proof  of  his  soundness  of  mind,  and  of 
his  manly,  philosophical  spirit. 

At  length,  after  being  long  importuned  by  the  noblest  minds  of  Italy,  Al- 
fonso released  him  in  1586,  at  the  earnest  entreaty  of  Don  Vincenzo  Gonzaga, 
son  of  the  Duke  of  Mantua,  at  whose  court  the  poet  for  a  time  took  up  his 
abode.  There,  through  the  kindness  and  attentions  of  his  patron  and  friends,  he 
improved  so  much  in  health  and  spirits  that  he  resumed  his  literary  labors,  and 
completed  his  father's  poem,  "  Floridante,"  and  his  own  tragedy,  "  Torrismondo." 

But,  with  advancing  age,  Tasso  became  still  more  restless  and  impatient  of 
dependence,  and  he  conceived  a  desire  to  visit  Naples,  in  the  hope  of  obtaining 
some  part  of  the  confiscated  property  of  his  parents.  Accordingly,  having  re- 
ceived permission  from  the  duke,  he  left  Mantua,  and  arrived  in  Naples  at  the 
end  of  March,  1588.  About  this  time  he  made  several  alterations  in  his  "Jeru- 
salem," corrected  numerous  faults,  and  took  away  all  the  praises  he  had  be- 
stowed on  the  House  of  Este.  Alfieri  used  to  say  that  this  amended  "Jeru- 
salem "  was  the  only  one  which  he  could  read  with  pleasure  to  himself  or  with 
admiration  for  the  author.  But  as  there  appeared  no  hope  that  his  claims  would 
be  soon  adjusted,  he  returned  to  Rome  in  November,  1588.  Ever  harassed  by 
a  restless  mind,  he  quitted,  one  after  another,  the  hospitable  roofs  which  gave 
him  shelter  ;  and  at  last,  destitute  of  all  resources  and  afflicted  with  illness,  took 
refuge  in  the  hospital  of  the  Bergamaschi,  with  whose  founder  he  claimed  rela- 
tion by  the  father's  side ;  a  singular  fate  for  one  with  whose  praises  Italy  even 
then  was  ringing.  But  it  should  be  remembered,  ere  we  break  into  invectives 
against  the  sordidness  of  the  age  which  suffered  this  degradation,  that  the  way- 
wardness of  Tasso's  temper  rendered  it  hard  to  satisfy  him  as  an  inmate,  or  to 
befriend  him  as  a  patron. 

Restored  to  health,  at  the  grand  duke's  invitation  he  went  to  Florence, 
where  both  prince  and  people  received  him  with  every  mark  of  admiration. 
Those  who  saw  him  as  he  passed  along  the  streets,  would  exclaim,  "  See !  there  is 
Tasso  !     That  is  tiic  wonderful  and  unfortunate  poet !  " 

It  is  useless  minutely  to  trace  his  wanderings  from  Florence  to  Rome,  from 
Rome  to  Mantua,  and  back  again  to  Rome  and  Naples.  At  the  latter  place  he 
dwelt  in  the  palace  of  the  Prince  of  Conca,  where  he  composed  a  great  part  of 
the   "Jerusalem    Conquered."      But   having   apprehended,   not  without  reason. 


38  ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 

that  the  prince  wished  to  possess  himself  of  his  manuscripts,  Torquato  left  the 
palace  to  reside  with  his  friend  Manso.  His  health  and  spirits  improved  in  his 
new  abode  ;  and  besides  proceeding  with  the  "  Jerusalem  Conquered,"  he  com- 
menced, at  the  request  of  Manso's  mother,  "Le  Sette  Giornate  del  Mondo  Cre- 
ato,"  a  sacred  poem  in  blank  verse,  founded  on  the  Book  of  Genesis,  which  he 
completed  in  Rome  a  few  days  before  his  death. 

He  visited  Rome  in  1593.  A  report  that  Marco  di  Sciarra,  a  notorious  ban- 
dit, infested  the  road,  induced  him  to  halt  at  Gaeta,  where  his  presence  was  cele- 
brated by  the  citizens  with  great  rejoicing.  Sciarra  having  heard  that  the  great 
poet  was  detained  by  fear  of  him,  sent  a  message  purporting  that,  instead  of  in- 
jury, Tasso  should  receive  every  protection  at  his  hands.  This  offer  was  declined  ; 
yet  Sciarra,  in  testimony  of  respect,  sent  word  that  for  the  poet's  sake  he  would 
withdraw  all  his  band  from  that  neighborhood  ;  and  he  did  so. 

This  time,  on  his  arrival  at  Rome,  Tasso  was  received  by  the  Cardinals  Cinzio 
and  Pietro  Aldobrandini,  nephews  of  the  pope,  not  as  a  courtier,  but  as  a  friend. 
At  their  palace  he  completed  the  "Jerusalem  Conquered,"  and  published  it  with 
a  dedication  to  Cardinal  Cinzio.  This  work  was  preferred  by  its  author  to  the 
"Jerusalem  Delivered."  It  is  remarkable  that  Milton  made  a  similar  error  in 
estimating  his  "Paradise  Regained." 

In  March,  1594,  Tasso  returned  to  Naples  in  hope  of  benefiting  his  rapidly 
declining  health.  The  experiment  appeared  to  answer;  but  scarcely  had  he 
passed  four  months  in  his  native  country,  when  Cardinal  Cinzio  requested  him 
to  hasten  to  Rome,  having  obtained  for  him  from  the  pope  the  honor  of  a  sol- 
emn coronation  in  the  Capitol.  In  the  following  November  the  poet  arrived  at 
Rome,  and  was  received  with  general  applause.  The  pope  himself  overwhelmed 
him  with  praises,  and  one  day  said,  "  Torquato,  I  give  you  the  laurel,  that  it  may 
receive  as  much  honor  from  you  as  it  has  conferred  upon  them  who  have  worn 
it  before  you."  To  give  to  this  solemnity  greater  splendor,  it  was  delayed  till 
April  25,  1595  ;  but  during  the  winter  Tasso's  health  became  worse.  Feeling 
that  his  end  was  nigh,  he  begged  to  be  removed  to  the  convent  of  St.  Onofrio, 
where  he  was  carried  off  by  fever  on  the  very  day  appointed  for  his  coronation. 
His  corpse  was  interred  the  same  evening  in  the  church  of  the  monastery,  accord- 
ing to  his  will  ;  and  his  tomb  was  covered  with  a  plain  stone,  on  which,  ten  years 
after,  Manso,  his  friend  and  admirer,  caused  this  simple  epitaph  to  be  engraved 
— Hie  Jacet  Torquatus  Tasso. 


CERVANTES 


39 


CERVANTES 

By  Joseph  Forster 
(1547-1616) 

CERVANTES,  the  Shakespeare  of  Spain, 
led  a  life  of  the  most  romantic  and 
adventurous  kind.  In  fact,  no  novelist 
has  ever  invented  a  story  as  fascinating 
and  varied  as  the  bare  facts  of  his  most 
extraordinary  career.  He  was  a  soldier, 
a  dramatist,  a  patriot,  a  slave  ;  and  after 
producing,  perhaps,  the  greatest  novel 
ever  written,  a  work  which  is  the  glory 
of  Spanish  literature  and  a  delight  to  the 
civilized  world,  he  died  poor  and  neg- 
lected. 

His  family  was  noble  and  was  first 
settled  in  Galicia,  from  whence  it  moved 
to  Castile.  Cervantes  was  born  in  1547.  His  family,  although  honorable,  was 
very  poor,  but  he  received  a  liberal  education.  He  became  a  page,  chamberlain, 
and  afterward  a  soldier,  and  fought  at  the  naval  battle  of  Lepanto,  "  Where," 
he  said,  "  I  lost  my  left  hand  by  an  arquebuse  under  the  conquering  banner  of 
the  son  of  that  thunderbolt  of  war,  Charles  V.,  of  happy  memory." 

He  also  distinguished  himself  at  the  siege  of  Tunis,  and  later  was  taken  pris- 
oner by  a  Barbary  corsair,  and  was  kept  in  cruel  captivity  for  five  years  at  Al- 
giers. It  was  customary  with  the  Algerines  to  treat  their  prisoners  according  to 
their  supposed  rank  and  expected  ransom.  The  avarice  of  the  masters  some- 
times alleviated  the  lot  of  the  Christian  slaves  ;  but,  unfortunately  for  Cervantes, 
he  was  treated  with  extreme  severity  in  order  to  compel  him  to  obtain  ransom 
from  his  friends,  while  he,  the  very  soul  of  independence,  tried  to  escape  in  order 
to  avoid  trespassing  on  their  resources.  The  interest  of  the  Moors  was  to  pre- 
tend to  believe  that  their  captives  were  of  exalted  rank  and  position,  in  order  to 
obtain  a  bigger  ransom. 

Cerv'^antes,  in  one  of  his  novels,  makes  Ricardo  give  an  account  of  this  notable 
custom  in  the  story  of  his  adventures.  His  master,  Fetale,  is  always  compli- 
menting him  upon  his  exalted  rank,  and  telling  him  that,  from  a  sense  of  honor, 
he  should  pay  a  high  ransom.  He  tells  him  that  it  is  not  becoming  his  rank  to 
remain  an  idle  and  inglorious  captive,  and  laughs  at  the  repeated  disclaimers  of 
his  prisoner.  Unfortunately,  when  Cervantes  was  captured  he  had  in  his  posses- 
sion letters  of  introduction  from  public  personages  of  the  day,  which  caused  him 
to  be  highly  valued.     This  led  to  cruel  sufferings,  inflicted  in  the  expectation  of 


40  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

obtaining  a  hieavy  ransom.  He  was  sentenced  to  be  imprisoned  in  a  place  called 
the  Baths.  The  Moorish  dungeons  had  three  depths  of  caverns,  like  under- 
ground granaries.  In  mockery  of  the  light  of  heaven,  there  was  one  small  win- 
dow, and  that  was  crossed  with  iron  bars.  The  sun  and  air  never  entered  this 
awful  place.  The  only  sights  were  harrowing  ;  the  only  company  was  that  of 
convicts,  thieves,  murderers,  and  the  lowest  Moorish  rabble  ;  and  the  sounds  and 
voices,  mixed  with  blasphemies  and  oaths,  were  re-echoed  as  if  from  the  vaults  of 
the  dead.  Every  sense  was  outraged  by  the  accumulation  of  horrors  that  com- 
bined to  disgust  and  horrify.  Hunger,  nakedness,  thirst,  heat,  damp,  and  cold, 
all  combined  to  swell  the  catalogue  of  their  miseries  and  their  woes.  We  can 
easily  picture  the  sufferings  of  Cervantes,  whose  captivity  was  as  severe  as  it  was 
possible  even  for  his  Algerian  master  to  make  it.  No  wonder  that  a  man  so  full 
of  energy  as  Cervantes  should  try  again  and  again  to  escape  from  his  infernal 
captivity.  On  four  occasions  he  was  on  the  point  of  being  impaled,  hanged,  or 
burned  alive  for  his  daring  attempts  to  liberate  himself  and  his  unfortunate  com- 
rades. But,  of  all  the  enterprises  which  entered  the  imagination  of  this  fearless 
soldier,  the  most  generous,  noble,  and  remarkable,  as  regarded  its  consequences, 
made  too  at  a  period  when  Europe  trembled  at  the  clank  of  the  Ottoman  chains, 
was  that  of  rising  upon  their  tyrants  and  destroying  them  in  the  very  stronghold 
of  their  cruelty  and  their  power. 

There  is  the  best  authority  for  believing  that,  if  the  good  fortune  of  Cervantes 
had  been  equal  to  his  courage,  perseverance,  and  skill,  the  city  of  Algiers  would 
have  been  taken  by  the  Christians ;  for  his  bold  and  resolute  project  aimed  at  no 
less  a  result.  Moreover,  if  he  had  not  been  sold  and  betrayed  by  those  who  un- 
dertook to  assist  him  in  his  grand  and  noble  undertaking — to  liberate  the  captives 
of  so  many  lands — his  own  captivity  might  have  proved  a  fortunate  event. 

At  last  Cervantes  returned  to  Spain,  after  five  years'  slavery  at  Algiers.  He 
returned  fired  with  animosity  against  the  Moors,  and  filled  with  ardent  sympathy 
for  those  Christians  still  in  slavery.  Thus  his  comedy  of  "  El  Trato  de  Argel, 
Los  Banos  de  Argel,"  his  tale  of  the  Captive  in  "  Don  Quixote,"  and  that  of 
the  Generous  Lover,  were  not  mere  literary  works,  but  charitable  endeavors  to 
serve  the  Christian  captives,  and  to  excite  the  public  sympath}^  in  their  favor.  I 
have  dwelt  fully  on  this  extraordinary  experience  of  Cervantes,  an  experience 
which  brought  him  into  direct  contact  with  the  lowest  classes  and  the  elementary 
passions  of  mankind,  with  a  view  of  showing  how  profound  and  terrible  was  his 
knowledge  of  human  character  and  human  passion. 

Before  producing  his  immortal  masterpiece,  "  Don  Quixote,"  Cervantes  wrote 
a  great  number  of  plays  which  were  not  successful.  When  Cervantes  speaks  of 
his  own  dramatic  works  in  his  old  age,  his  simplicity  and  gayety  are  very  touch- 
ing, because  he  was  evidently  deeply  wounded  at  the  neglect  of  his  plays. 

"  Some  years  ago,"  he  says,  "  I  returned  to  the  ancient  occupation  of  my  leisure 
hours  ;  and,  imagining  that  the  age  had  not  passed  away  in  which  I  used  to  hear 
the  sound  of  praise,  I  began  to  write  comedies.  The  birds,  however,  had  flown 
from  their  nest.    I  could  find  no  manager  to  ask  for  my  plays,  though  they  knew 


CERVANTES  41 

that  I  had  written  them.  I  threw  them,  therefore,  into  the  corner  of  a  trunk,  and 
condemned  them  to  obscurity.  A  bookseller  then  told  me  that  he  would  have 
bought  them  from  me,  had  he  not  been  told  by  a  celebrated  author  that  much  de- 
pendence might  be  placed  upon  my  prose,  but  not  upon  my  poetry.  To  say  the 
truth,  this  information  mortified  me  much.  I  said  to  myself,  '  Cervantes,  you 
are  certainly  either  changed,  or  the  world,  contrary  to  its  custom,  has  grown  wiser, 
for  in  past  times  you  used  to  meet  with  praise.'  I  read  my  comedies  anew,  to- 
gether with  some  interludes  which  I  had  placed  with  them.  I  found  that  they 
were  not  so  bad  but  that  they  might  pass,  from  what  this  author  called  darkness, 
into  what  others  might  perhaps  term  noon-day.  I  was  angry,  and  sold  them  to 
the  bookseller,  who  has  now  printed  them.  They  have  paid  me  tolerably  ;  and  I 
have  pocketed  my  money  with  pleasure,  and  without  troubling  m3fself  about  the 
opinions  of  the  actors  ;  I  was  willing  to  make  them  as  excellent  as  I  could,  and 
if,  dear  reader,  thou  findest  anything  in  them  good,  I  pray  thee,  when  thou  meet- 
est  any  other  calumniator,  to  tell  him  to  amend  his  manners,  and  not  to  judge  so 
severely,  since  after  all  the  plays  contain  not  any  incongruities  or  striking  faults." 
I  must  not  dwell  further  on  Cervantes's  minor  works,  but  will  pass  to  his  great 
masterpiece,  "  Don  Quixote."  This  work  contains  the  hoarded  experience  of  a. 
life.  It  was  written  when  its  author  was  declining  in  years.  No  young  man 
could  have  written  it,  because  no  young  man  can  be  a  master,  especially  of  humor 
and  human  nature.  Don  Quixote  himself  is  a  character  of  the  most  complex 
kind.  His  single-heartedness,  his  enthusiasm,  his  utter  want  of  the  sense  of  the 
ridiculous,  his  power  of  adding  romantic  charms  and  romantic  attributes  to  a 
frowsy  servant-girl,  are  developed  and  used  by  the  author  with  a  varietv  of  power 
that  has  never  been  equalled.  Don  Quixote's  life  is  entirely  in  the  imagination  ; 
this  enables  him  to  see  castles  in  windmills,  beauty  and  refinement  in  coarseness 
and  vulgarity,  and  poetry,  wisdom,  and  genius  in  bombastic  and  absurd  works  on 
chivalry,  love,  and  knight-errantry.  To  emphasize  the  romantic  and  preposter- 
ous exaltation  of  the  mad  gentleman  of  La  Mancha,  we  have  his  coarse,  vulgar, 
practical,  almost  grovelling  squire,  Sancho  Panza.  The  master  lives  in  the 
clouds ;  Sancho  is  most  at  home  in  the  mud.  Everything  that  can  be  done  to 
bring  out  the  contrast  between  these  two  characters  is  put  in  the  most  amusing 
and  effective  manner.  No  extracts  could  convey  to  the  reader  the  adventures  of 
the  master  and  man  at  the  inn — a  very  vulgar  inn,  too — which  Don  Quixote  takes 
for  an  enchanted  castle,  in  spite  of  the  smell  of  rancid  oil  and  garlic,  and  where, 
as  a  climax  to  all  the  other  piled-up  absurdities,  poor  Sancho,  who  is  short  and 
fat,  is  tossed  in  a  blanket.  Don  Quixote  always  expresses  himself  in  a  stilted  and 
oratorical  manner ;  Sancho's  language  is  of  the  coarsest  kind,  and  is  interlarded 
with  the  vulgarest  illustrations  and  proverbs.  His  master  is  tall,  attenuated,  in 
fact,  merely  skin  and  bone  ;  his  face  is  long,  his  nose  prominent,  his  eyes  hollow 
and  very  bright ;  Sancho,  on  the  contrary,  is  short,  fat,  his  face  is  round,  eyes 
small  and  pig-like,  mouth  large  and  coarse,  nose  nothing  to  speak  of;  in  fact,  it  is. 
a  contrast  between  the  poetical  gone  mad  and  the  coarsest  realism. 

This  work  was  the  delight  of  Spain  ;  it  was  read  with  shouts  of  laughter   by 


42  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

the  king  and  the  peasant.  Poor  Don  Quixote  is  a  type  of  the  fatal  results  which 
follow  the  possession  of  romantic  feelings  and  enthusiasm  without  common-sense 
to  guide  and  control  them.  On  the  other  hand,  and  that  is  the  priceless  lesson 
of  the  book,  his  man,  Sancho  Panza,  shows  what  the  mere  worship  of  ease  and 
vulgar  prudence  will  degrade  a  man  to.  If  the  enthusiasm  and  mad  exaltation 
of  Don  Quixote  could  have  been  combined  with  a  little  of  the  vulvar  self-love  of 
Sancho,  one  extreme  might  have  corrected  the  other,  and  we  might  have  had  a 
wise  gentleman  instead  of  a  maniac  and  a  brute. 

Such  was  the  success  of  this  wonderful  work  that,  as  Philip  III.  was  one 
afternoon  standing  in  a  balcony  of  his  palace  at  Madrid,  he  observed  a  student 
on  the  banks  of  the  river  Manzanares,  with  a  book  in  his  hand,  which  delighted 
him  so  that,  every  now  and  then,  he  broke  into  an  ecstasy  of  laughter.  The 
king  looked  at  him,  and,  turning  to  his  courtiers,  said,  "That  man  is  either  mad 
or  reading  '  Don  Quixote.'  " 

Although  the  king  thought  so  highly  of  this  great  work,  its  author  was  bowed 
down  by  poverty  and  infirmities,  and  nothing  was  done  for  him  by  the  king  or 
his  courtiers.  The  last  glimpse  of  the  life  of  Cervantes  I  have  space  for,  is  from 
his  own  inimitable  pen,  and  is  taken  from  the  preface  to  the  "  Labors  of  Persiles 
and  Sigismunda,"  which  was  published  by  the  author's  widow. 

"  It  happened  afterward,  dear  reader,  that  as  two  of  my  friends  and  myself 
were  coming  from  Esquivias,  a  place  famous  for  twenty  reasons,  but  more  espe- 
cially for  illustrious  families  and  for  its  excellent  wines,  I  heard  a  man  coming 
behind  us,  whipping  his  nag  with  all  his  might,  and  seemingly  very  desirous  of 
overtaking  us.  Presently  he  called-  out  to  us  to  stop,  which  we  did  ;  and  when 
he  came  up  he  turned  out  to  be  a  country  student,  dressed  in  brown,  with  spat- 
terdashes and  round-toed  shoes.  He  had  a  sword  in  a  huge  sheath,  and  a  band 
tied  with  tape.  He  had  indeed  but  two  tapes,  so  that  his  band  got  out  of  its 
place,  which  he  took  great  pains  to  rectify. 

"'Doubtless,'  said  he,  'senors,  you  are  in  quest  of  some  office  or  some  pre- 
bend at  the  court  of  my  lord  of  Toledo,  or  from  the  king,  if  I  may  judge  from 
the  celerity  with  which  you  get  along ;  for,  in  good  truth,  my  ass  has  hitherto 
had  the  fame  of  a  good  trotter,  and  yet  he  could  not  overtake  you." 

"  One  of  my  companions  answered,  '  It  is  the  steed  of  Senor  Miguel  de 
Cervantes  that  is  the  cause  of  it,  for  he  is  very  quick  in  his  paces.' " 

"  Scarcely  had  the  student  heard  the  name  of  Cervantes  than,  throwing  him- 
self off  his  ass,  while  his  cloak-bag  tumbled  on  one  side  and  his  portmanteau 
on  the  other,  and  his  bands  covered  his  face,  he  sprang  toward  me,  and,  seizing 
me  by  the  hand,  exclaimed  : 

" '  This,  then,  is  the  famous  one-handed  author,  the  merriest  of  all  writers, 
the  favorite  of  the  Muses ! '  As  for  me,  when  I  heard  him  pouring  forth  all 
these  praises,  I  thought  myself  bound  to  answer  him  ;  so,  embracing  his  neck, 
by  which  I  contrived  to  pull  off  his  bands  altogether,  I  said,  '  I  am  indeed  that 
Cervantes,  senor,  but  not  the  favorite  of  the  Muses,  nor  the  other  fine  things 
which  you  have  said  of  me.     Pray  mount  your  ass  again,  and  let  us  converse 


CERVANTES  43 

together  for  the  small  remainder  of  our  journey.'  The  good  student  did  as  I  de- 
sired. We  then  drew  bit  and  proceeded  at  a  more  moderate  pace.  As  we  rode 
on,  we  talked  of  my  illness,  but  the  student  gave  me  little  hope,  saying : 

"  '  It  is  an  hydropsy,  which  all  the  water  in  the  ocean,  if  you  could  drink  it, 
would  not  cure  ;  you  must  drink  less,  Senor  Cervantes,  and  not  forget  to  eat, 
for  that  alone  can  cure  you.' 

" '  Many  other  people,'  said  I,  '  have  told  me  the  same  thing,  but  it  is  im- 
possible for  me  not  to  drink  as  if  I  had  been  born  for  nothing  but  drinking. 
Mv  life  is  pretty  nearly  ended,  and,  to  judge  by  the  quickness  of  my  pulse,  I 
cannot  live  longer  than  next  Sunday.  You  have  made  acquaintance  with  me  at 
a  very  unfortunate  time,  as  I  fear  I  shall  not  live  to  show  my  gratitude  to  you 
for  your  obliging  conduct.' 

"  Such  was  our  conversation  when  we  arrived  at  the  bridge  of  Toledo,  over 
which  I  was  to  pass,  while  'he  followed  another  route  by  the  bridge  of  Segovia. 
As  to  his  future  history,  I  leave  that  to  the  care  of  fame.  My  friends,  no  doubt, 
will  be  very  anxious  to  narrate  it,  and  I  shall  have  great  pleasure  in  hearing  it. 
I  embraced  him  anew,  and  repeated  the  offer  of  my  services. 

"He  spurred  his  ass,  and  left  me  as  ill  inclined  to  prosecute  my  journey  as  he 
was  well  disposed  to  go  on  his ;  he  had,  however,  supplied  my  pen  with  ample 
materials  for  pleasantry.  But  all  times  are  not  the  same.  Perhaps  the  day  may 
arrive  when,  taking  up  the  thread  which  I  am  now  compelled  to  break,  I  may 
complete  what  is  now  wanting,  and  what  I  would  fain  tell.  But  adieu  to  gayety  ; 
adieu  to  humor ;  adieu,  my  pleasant  friends !  I  must  now  die,  and  I  wish  for 
nothing  better  than  speedily  to  see  you — well  contented  in  another  world." 

Such  was  the  calm,  philosophical  gayety  with  which  this  long-suffering,  heroic 
man  and  Christian  contemplated  his  approaching  death  ;  and,  in  the  words  of 
Sismondi,  it  may  be  safely  asserted  that  this  unaffected  fortitude  was  character- 
istic of  the  soldier  who  fought  so  valiantly  at  Lepanto,  and  who  so  firmly  sup- 
ported his  five  years'  captivity  in  Algiers. 

Cervantes  died  at  Madrid  in  1616.  It  is,  perhaps,  interesting  to  reflect  that 
he  was  a  contemporar}'  of  Shakespeare,  so  that  the  two  greatest  humorists  the 
world  has  produced  were  living  at  the  same  time. 


u 


ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 


WILLIAM   SHAKESPEARE* 

By  Senator  John  J.  Ingalls 


(1564-1616) 


*^K^ 


I 


N  a  small  glazed  cabinet  near 
the  north  door  of  Holy 
Trinity  Church  in  the  War- 
wickshire village  of  Stratford- 
upon-Avon,  the  long  narrow 
volume  of  the  parish  register 
lies  open  at  the  page  on  which 
is  inscribed  in  clear,  clerkly 
hand  the  record  of  the  chris- 
tening of  William  Shakespeare, 
April  26,  1564.  Tradition, 
which  delights  in  coincidences, 
has  selected  as  his  birthday  the 
anniversary  of  his  death,  which 
occurred  April  23,  1616,  but  the  date  is  unknown.  His  lineage  was  hum- 
ble and  his  origin  obscure,  his  ancestors  having  been  tenant  farmers  and  small 
tradesmen  in  the  same  locality,  without  wealth,  education,  estate,  or  public  sta- 
tion. No  other  of  the  name  has  reached  special  distinction  before  or  since. 
His  grandfather,  Richard,  was  a  yeoman  at  the  neighboring  hamlet  of  Snitter- 
field.  His  father,  John,  who  appears,  from  the  vague  glimpses  of  his  history 
discernible,  to  have  been  of  an  ardent,  careless,  and  improvident  nature,  removed 
in  early  life  from  the  farm  at  Snitterfield  to  Stratford,  where  he  kept  a  country 
store.  He  prospered  in  business  for  a  while  and  was  active  in  local  politics,  ris- 
ing through  the  successive  gradations  of  leet  juror,  constable,  and  alderman  to 
high  bailiff  in  1568,  although  unable  to  write  his  own  name.  He  married,  in  1557, 
Mary  Arden,  the  daughter  of  his  father's  landlord,  who  brought  him  as  dower 
about  sixty  acres  of  land  and  the  equivalent  of  $200  in  money.  His  pride  was 
apparently  inflamed  by  political  success,  and  he  applied  to  the  Herald's  College 
for  a  grant  of  arms,  which  was  refused.  From  this  time  his  fortunes  rapidly  de- 
clined. He  mortgaged  his  property,  squandered  his  wife's  inheritance,  was  sued 
for  debt,  disregarded  his  social  and  religious  obligations,  and  became  so  indiffer- 
ent to  decency  that  he  was  fined  by  the  town  authorities  for  neglecting  to  remove 
the  filth  and  refuse  of  his  household  from  the  street  in  front  of  his  own  door. 
He  died  in  1601,  his  later  years  having  been  passed  in  honor  and  comfort  through 
the  efforts  of  his  son,  who  had  already  acquired  wealth  and  fame. 

The  homestead  of  John  Shakespeare,  in  which  he  lived  and  carried  on  his 
business,  still  stands  on  Henley  Street,  in  Stratford,  much  the  same  as  it  was  four 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE  45 

hundred  and  fifty  years  ago.  It  is  a  paltry  hovel  of  two  low  stories,  half  tim- 
bered, with  meagre  windows,  and  must  have  been  a  squalid  abode  even  in  its 
prime.  It  is  built  flush  with  the  sidewalk,  having  neither  vestibule  nor  entry, 
and  the  rough  broken  pavement  of  the  kitchen  is  sunken  a  step  lower  than  the 
street.  A  huge  open  fireplace  of  unhewn  gray  stones  yawms  rudely  in  the  wall 
to  the  right,  and  a  narrow  door  leads  to  a  smaller  apartment  in  the  rear.  Imme- 
diately above,  reached  by  a  precipitous  stairway,  is  the  bleak  and  barren  chamber, 
dimly  lighted,  the  legendary  birthplace  of  the  poet.  The  d^-elling  is  more  like 
the  cavern  of  a  savage  than  the  residence  of  civilized  man.  Making  due  allow- 
ance for  the  conditions  of  domestic  life  and  architecture  in  the  reigns  of  Eliza- 
beth and  James,  it  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  home  more  rude  and  primitive,  more 
destitute  of  comfort  and  convenience,  more  indicative  of  poverty  and  social  in- 
ferioritv.  The  rouarh-hewn  oak  of  the  frames  and  timbers  and  the  coarse  mortar 
of  the  plastered  spaces  show  no  more  decoration  or  ornament  than  the  frontier 
dug-out  on  the  plains  of  Dakota  or  the  miner's  cabin  in  the  gulches  of  Montana. 

In  this  environment  William  Shakespeare,  the  third  child  and  eldest  son  of 
eight  children,  was  born  and  lived  till  the  age  of  eighteen  years.  Of  his  compan- 
ions, his  studies,  his  pleasures  nothing  is  known. 

A  few  doors  from  his  father's  house  still  stands  a  group  of  gray  buildings, 
worn,  bleached,  and  washed  like  skeletons  by  the  storms  and  suns  of  eight  cen- 
turies :  a  chapel  with  pointed  windows  and  low  square  tower,  a  hall  and  the  alms- 
houses of  the  ancient  guild.  In  the  second  story  of  the  hall  was  the  endowed 
grammar  school  of  Stratford,  restored  by  Edward  VI.  in  1553,  and  the  uncouth, 
venerable  desk  at  which  Shakespeare  is  said  to  have  studied  is  included  among 
the  few  unauthenticated  relics  in  the  museum  at  the  homestead.  It  is  a  reason- 
able inference  that  whatever  education  he  received  was  obtained  here,  but  this 
fact,  as  well  as  the  character  and  amount  of  his  early  training,  is  wholly  conject- 
ural. The  first  formal  separate  biography  of  Shakespeare  was  published  in 
1 743,  one  hundred  and  twenty-seven  years  after  his  death,  by  Rowe,  who  says 
that  the  boy  was  withdrawn  from  school  in  1578  to  assist  his  father  in  the 
drudgery  of  the  shop  and  farm.  Other  mouldy  gossip  makes  him  a  butcher's 
apprentice,  a  country  pedagogue,  and  a  lawyer's  clerk,  arrested  for  poaching, 
addicted  to  carousing  and  the  boorish  pleasures  of  the  country-side. 

A  little  distance  westward  from  Stratford  by  a  footpath  winding  through 
pleasant  fields  lies  the  hamlet  of  Shottery,  in  the  edge  of  which,  with  its  gable  to 
the  highway,  stands  the  cottage  of  Richard  Hathaway,  as  humble  in  its  archi- 
tecture and  accessories  as  the  Shakespeare  abode.  The  entrance  is  through  a 
rustic  garden  with  pinks  and  marigolds  bordering  the  narrow  way,  and  a  cov- 
ered well  before  the  door.  November  28,  1582,  the  Bishop  of  Worcester  granted 
a  license  for  the  marriage  of  "William  Shagspere  and  Anne  Hathwey"  upon 
once  asking  of  the  banns.  The  bridegroom  was  eighteen  and  the  bride  twenty- 
six.  By  this  act  William  Shakespeare  assumed  the  paternity  of  a  daughter  born 
six  months  afterward,  and  baptized  Susanna,  May  26,  1583.  The  only  other 
children  born  of  the  marriage  were  twins,  Hamnet  and  Judith,  christened  Febru- 


46  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

ary  2,  1585.  The  two  daughters  survived  their  father,  but  Hamnet  died  at  the 
age  of  twelve. 

Thus  two  months  before  he  became  of  age  Shakespeare  found  himself  a  cadet 
of  a  ruined  house,  the  parent  of  three  children,  with  no  business,  trade,  or  fort- 
une, and  the  compulsory  husband  of  a  woman  old  enough  to  have  been  the 
wife  of  his  father.  Where  and  how  they  lived  has  not  been  discovered.  The 
mature  age  and  premature  maternity  of  Mrs.  Shakespeare  justify  inferences 
which  his  mysterioifs  departure  for  London  does  not  weaken,  and  his  long  absence, 
his  infrequent  visits  to  Stratford,  the  Duke's  injunction  to  Viola — ■"  let  still  the 
woman  take  An  Elder  than  herself  " — and  the  ironical  bequest  of  his  second  best 
bed,  neither  diminish  nor  destroy. 

The  seven  years  succeeding  the  birth  of  Hamnet  and  Judith  are  a  blank  in 
Shakespeare's  biography.  He  disappeared  even  from  the  reach  of  rumor  and 
.  tradition.  One  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  his  death  Oldys,  the  antiquarian, 
exhumed  an  ancient  legend,  to  the  effect  that  he  fled  to  London  to  avoid  the 
consequences  of  lampooning  a  neighboring  nobleman  who  had  prosecuted  him 
for  killing  a  deer  in  his  park,  and  sought  employment  at  the  theatre.  Unsup- 
ported anecdotes  represent  him  as  holding  horses  At  the  door  of  the  play-house, 
then  as  a  servant  to  the  company,  and  at  last  as  general  utility  man  on  the  stage. 
As  an  actor  he  made  no  impression,  although  he  continued  to  appear  in  subor- 
dinate parts,  and  played  in  Ben  Jonson's  "Sejanus"  at  its  production  in  1603, 
when  he  was  forty  years  old.  The  first  public  notice  he  received  was  in  1592,  in 
a  letter  of  Robert  Greene,  a  dissolute  writer,  who  accuses  Shakespeare  and  Mar- 
lowe of  plagiarism,  conceit,  and  ingratitude.  Chettle,  the  publisher,  soon  after- 
ward printed  a  retraction  so  far  as  Shakespeare  was  concerned,  and  eulogized  his 
manners,  his  honesty,  and  his  art.  Our  acquaintance  with  his  life  of  twenty  years 
in  London,  which  closed  probably  in  161 3,  is  almost  exclusively  confined  to  the 
appearance  of  the  plays  and  poems  bearing  his  name,  and  the  date  at  which  these 
were  produced  is  generally  a  matter  of  surmise  or  inference.  During  this  interval 
he  became  a  large  shareholder  in  two  theatres,  speculated  in  real  estate,  loaned 
money,  grew  rapidly  in  wealth,  and  was  a  man  about  town.  He  belonged  to  no 
church,  nor  to  any  political  party,  and  sustained  no  recorded  relations  with  the 
scholars,  soldiers,  or  statesmen  of  his  time. 

The  two  volumes  of  poems,  "  Venus  and  Adonis,"  and  "  Lucrece,"  were  pub- 
lished respectively  in  1593  and  1594,  and  the  "  Sonnets  "  in  1609.  The  dramas 
were  acted  between  1587  and  161 2,  and  are  grouped  by  critics  in  four  periods  of 
intellectual  growth  and  development.  They  are  of  unequal  excellence.  Some 
are  mere  versions  and  adaptations.  The  plots  and  stories  are  generally  borrowed. 
Some  of  the  worst  are  unspeakably  bad,  but  the  best,  with  their  subtle  and  im- 
perious command  of  language,  stately  and  splendid  imagery,  careless  opulence 
of  incident,  learning,  and  illustration,  wit,  wisdom,  humor,  and  philosophy,  in- 
sight into  the  complex  abysses  of  human  passion,  familiarity  with  the  secret 
motives  of  human  conduct,  and  profound  meditation  upon  the  most  sombre  prob- 
lems of  human  destiny,  mark  the  highest  elevation  yet  reached  by  the  human  mind. 


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WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE  47 

No  edition  of  the  plays  was  collected  during  Shakespeare's  lifetime,  nor 
until  seven  years  after  his  death.  His  heirs  and  executors  made  no  claim  to 
supervision  nor  ownership.  He  took  no  apparent  interest  in  them,  nor  corrected, 
nor  revised  them  for  publication.  He  left  no  indication  by  which  the  genuine 
could  be  discerned  from  the  spurious,  and  was  apparently  indifferent  to  literary 
reputation.  Unlike  many  of  his  great  contemporaries  in  that  luminous  epoch, 
there  was  little  of  the  Bohemian  in  Shakespeare.  He  attended  strictly  to  busi- 
ness, and  grew  in  prosperity  as  he  increased  in  fame.  Marlowe,  Massinger,  Ford, 
Decker,  Middleton,  Webster,  and  others  of  his  associates  led  precarious  and  ir- 
regular lives  as  hack-writers  for  the  stage,  but  Shakespeare,  in  his  triple  functions 
as  actor,  author,  and  shareholder  of  the  Blackfriars  and  the  Globe,  rapidly  ac- 
quired a  fortune.  As  early  as  1597,  after  ten  years  in  London,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-four,  he  had  amassed  enough  to  enable  him  to  buy  New  Place,  the  largest 
mansion  in  Stratford,  built  by  Sir  Hugh  Clopton,  and  from  time  to  time  he 
added  to  his  possessions  by  the  purchase  of  real  estate  and  tithes,  till  he  became 
the  wealthiest  citizen  of  his  native  town.  He  was  also  the  owner  of  improved 
property  in  London,  near  St.  Paul's  Cathedral,  bought  three  years  before  his 
death.  No  doubt  the  bitter  recollections  of  the  privations  of  his  childhood,  and 
the  humiliations  resulting  from  his  father's  heedless  improvidence,  stimulated  his 
purpose  to  retrieve  the  misfortunes  of  his  family,  establish  them  in  comfort  and 
dignity  amid  the  familiar  scenes  of  his  youth,  and  retire  from  the  scene  of  his  tri- 
umphs to  the  shadowy  forests  and  sylvan  vistas  of  the  Avon,  where  his  life  began. 

The  "Great  House"  in  New  Place,  where  Shakespeare  led  the  life  of  a  coun- 
tr)^  gentleman  after  breaking  the  magician's  wand,  like  the  other  residences  in 
Stratford,  must  have  stood  even  with  the  street,  for  the  brick  arches  of  part  of  the 
foundation,  and  fragments  of  the  side  and  cross  walls  remain,  being  covered  with 
iron  gratings  to  prevent  depredation.  The  curb  and  canopy  of  the  well  from 
which  he  drank  are  draped  with  clustering  vines.  It  was  a  modest  domain  of 
small  area,  and  is  now  a  grassy  lawn  surrounded  by  an  iron  paling.  After  the 
death  of  Shakespeare's  granddaughter.  Lady  Bernard,  in  1670,  the  house  was 
sold  to  a  descendant  of  its  original  owner,  and  finally  became  the  property  of 
Rev.  Francis  Gastrell,  who,  in  1 756,  cut  down  the  mulberry-tree  planted  by 
Shakespeare,  because  he  was  annoyed  by  the  curiosity  of  visitors,  and  in  1759 
razed  the  house  to  the  ground  on  account  of  some  controversy  about  taxes  with 
the  local  authorities. 

The  museum  of  relics  and  curiosities  in  the  rooms  adjoining  the  kitchen  and 
chamber  above,  in  the  house  of  John  Shakespeare,  contains  early  editions  of  the 
plays,  unimportant  engravings,  a  ring  with  the  initials  W.  S.,  a  chair,  and  a 
sword  supposed  to  have  belonged  to  the  poet,  some  contemporary  deeds  and 
writings,  and  a  letter  to  him  from  a  neighbor  entreating  the  loan  of  thirty  pounds. 
Few  traces  of  his  closing  days  in  Stratford  remain.  He  was  an  exacting  creditor, 
had  some  trivial  transactions  with  the  corporation,  and  took  an  active  interest  in 
municipal  affairs.  He  died  suddenly,  A]iril  23,  1616.  His  son-in-law.  Dr.  John 
Hall,  the  husband  of  Susanna,  was  the  leading  physician  of  Stratford,  and  a  prac- 


48  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

titioner  of  considerable  repute.  He  left  notes  of  important  cases  in  which  he  of- 
ficiated, and  their  treatment.  He  would  naturally  have  attended  Shakespeare  in 
his  last  illness,  but  he  makes  no  mention  of  the  case,  nor  of  the  cause  of  his 
death.  Reverend  John  Ward,  who  was  vicar  of  Stratford  nearly  fifty  years  after- 
ward, wrote  in  his  diary — "  Shakespeare,  Drayton,  and  Ben  Jonson  had  a  merie 
meeting  and  it  seems  drank  too  hard,  for  Shakespeare  died  of  a  feavour  there  con- 
tracted." The  old  sanctuary  in  which  he  was  buried  is  a  noble  specimen  of 
decorated  gothic  architecture,  a  cruciform  structure  of  yellowish-gray  stone,  with 
low  eaves  and  broad  sheltering  roof,  from  the  midst  of  which  rises  a  square  battle- 
mented  tower  with  slender  pointed  spire.  It  is  approached  by  a  paved  stone 
path  bordered  with  limes,  leading  from  the  highway  through  the  graveyard  where, 
beneath  a  twilight  of  shade,  many  generations  of  the  rude  forefathers  of  the  hamlet 
sleep.  Along  the  venerable  aisles  of  the  nave  and  in  the  transept,  are  effigies  and 
memorial  tablets  disclosed  in  the  dim  religious  light.  The  chancel  is  dispropor- 
tionately spacious  and  has  high  stained-glass  windows  at  the  sides  and  end.  In 
front  of  the  altar,  beneath  slabs  of  gray  stone,  are  the  graves  of  Shakespeare  and 
his  family.  The  widow,  who  survived  him  seven  years,  lies  nearest  the  wall,  and 
on  the  other  side  Susanna  and  her  husband.  Dr.  Hall.  The  removal  of  the  dust 
to  Westminster  Abbey  has  been  prevented  by  the  profane  imprecation  of  the 
inexplicable  epitaph  by  which  the  tenant  of  the  tomb,  as  if  in  anticipation  of  the 
irreconcilable  mysteries  posterity  would  discover  in  his  history,  bequeathed  an 
undying  curse  to  him  who  should  disturb  his  repose. 

Some  distance  away,  and  at  a  considerable  height  in  the  north  wall  of  the 
chancel,  upon  a  bracket  between  two  windows,  is  a  half-length  bust  of  Shake- 
speare with  a  pedantic  Latin  inscription.  It  was  placed  in  1623  by  Dr.  Hall, 
and  being  so  nearly  contemporary,  may  be  considered  a  portrait.  -  A  few  years 
ago  the  church  authorities  permitted  an  American  artist  to  erect  a  platform  from 
which  to  study  the  work  minutely.  He  found  one  cheek-bone  higher  than  the 
other,  and  was  of  opinion,  from  the  position  of  the  lips  and  tongue,  that  it  was 
modelled  from  a  cast  taken  after  death.  It  is  a  beefy,  commonplace  counte- 
nance, heavy,  dull,  and  vacant,  rendered  trivial  and  conceited  by  foppish  mus- 
taches curled  up  beneath  the  nostrils.  It  bears  little  resemblance  to  the  familiar 
Droeshout  portrait  engraved  for  the  first  edition  of  the  plays,  and  still  less  to  the 
so-called  Stratford  portrait  exhibited  at  the  museum  on  Henley  Street.  This 
picture  was  discovered  many  years  ago  in  the  shop  of  a  London  antiquarian  by 
an  unknown  person,  who  thought  the  upper  part  of  the  head  resembled  Shake- 
speare's. The  face  bore  a  heavy  beard,  which  was  supposed  to  have  been  added 
to  save  the  work  from  destruction  by  the  Puritans  !  As  the  incidents  are  related 
there  is  no  evidence  of  its  genuineness  or  authenticity.  One  of  the  chief  attrac- 
tions of  the  Memorial  Museum  in  the  lovely  park  near  the  church,  on  the  banks 
of  the  Avon,  is  a  series  of  photographs  of  a  plaster  cast  purporting  to  be  a  death- 
mask  of  Shakespeare,  now  in  the  possession  of  some  German  potentate,  which 
one  of  the  most  eminent  English  judges  declares  to  be  established  by  evidence 
sufficient  to  maintain  any  proposition  in  a  court  of  law.      It  should  be  genuine,  if 


WILLIAM    SHAKESPEARE  10 

it  is  not,  for  it  represents  the  loftiest  and  noblest  type  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race. 
The  other  portraits  are  vapid,  affected,  and  conventional,  without  character  or 
expression  ;  but  this  is  superb.  The  broad  imperial  brow,  the  firm,  aquiline,  and 
sensitive  nose,  the  mouth  proud,  humorous,  and  passionate,  the  full  orbits  of 
the  eyes,  and  the  resolute,  massive  jaw,  all  indicate  a  temperament  and  brain 
of  which  the  greatest  deeds  in  letters,  arts,  or  arms,  might  be  confidently  pre- 
dicted. 

A  few  weeks  before  his  death  Shakespeare  made  a  will,  bequeathing  all  his 
landed  property  in  strict  entail  to  his  eldest  daughter.  This  document  is  pre- 
served at  Somerset  House,  a  vast  government  building  in  London,  adjoining 
Waterloo  Bridge,  between  the  Strand  and  the  Victoria  Embankment,  where  the 
probate  records  of  the  kingdom  are  deposited.  It  is  locked  in  a  buff  leather 
case  with  an  engraved  inscription  on  a  brass  disk  on  the  lid.  It  is  written  on 
three  large  square  separate  sheets  of  heavy  paper,  discolored  by  time.  Each 
sheet  is  laid  flat  and  sealed  between  two  plates  of  clear  glass,  so  that  both  sides 
can  be  inspected.  The  handwriting  of  the  scrivener  in  the  body  of  the  instru- 
ment is  quite  distinct  and  legible,  considering  its  antiquity.  The  signature  of 
Shakespeare  appears  at  the  bottom  of  each  sheet.  The  chirography  of  men  of 
genius  is  proverbially  bad,  generally  from  its  fliuent  facility,  but  the  autographs  of 
Shakespeare  are  clumsy,  uncouth,  and  awkward,  their  disconnected  and  sprawling 
letters  seeming  to  have  been  formed  with  difficulty  by  fingers  unfamiliar  with  the 
use  of  the  pen.  They  may  perhaps  have  been  written  in  an  unaccustomed  posi- 
tion, or  when  the  testator  was  enfeebled  by  disease.  It  could  not  have  been  the 
infirmity  of  age,  for  he  was  but  fifty-two  when  he  died.  It  is  impossible  to  look 
at  these  signatures  without  receiving  the  impression  that  they  were  written  by  an 
illiterate  man.  It  is  not  merely  their  illegibility,  but  they  have  the  scrawly  curves 
and  uncertain  terminations  of  the  penman  who  is  not  certain  about  the  spelling  of 
his  own  name.  The  great  collections  of  London  contain  many  manuscripts  of 
celebrated  authors,  ancient  and  modern,  and  some  that  are  hard  to  decipher,  but 
there  is  no  chirography  more  hopelessly  and  irreclaimably  unlettered  and  un- 
scholarly  than  that  of  William  Shakespeare. 

At  the  shrine  by  the  placid  Avon,  which  the  centuries  have  invested  with 
their  pensive  and  resistless  charm,  and  over  which  genius  has  cast  its  enchanting 
spell,  an  impassable  gulf  seems  fixed  between  the  Shakespeare  of  Stratford  and 
the  Shakespeare  of  London.  They  appear  like  two  entirely  different  and  almost 
irreconcilable  personalities.  All  that  is  known  of  either  renders  all  that  is 
claimed  for  the  other  improbable.  Many  dual  lives  have  been  lived  before  and 
since,  but  none  seem  so  incompatible  as  these. 

It  is  unlikely  that  the  claim  of  Shakespeare  to  the  authorship  of  the  dramas 
that  bear  his  name  will  ever  be  overthrown.  Mis  title  has  been  too  long  con- 
ceded to  be  successfully  contested.  That  he  wrote  them  can  now  be  neither 
proved  nor  refuted,  l)ut  tliere  are  inherent  improbabilities  that  must  always  make 
the  Shakespearean  legend  a  profoundly  fascinating  subject  of  psychological  con- 
sideration. 

4 


50 


ARTISTS    AND   AUTHORS 


And  were  he  to  he  dethroned,  to  whom  should  the  sceptre  and  the  crown  be 
given  ?  Lord  Bacon  had  a  kingly  soul,  capacious  great  thoughts,  and  high  de- 
signs, but  no  one  who  has  read  his  metrical  translation  of  the  Psalms  of  David 
will  be  troubled  again  with  doubts  whether  he  was  the  writer  also  of  "  Macbeth," 
"Othello,"  and  "  Lear."  Compared  with  these  sterile,  bald,  and  mechanical  qua- 
trains, the  sacred  hymns  of  Isaac  Watts  are  howling  and  bacchanalian  anacreon- 
tics, to  be  hiccoughed  by  drunkards  in  their  most  abandoned  hours  of  revelry. 

Pondering  upon  the  mystery  as  I  walked  up  and  down  beneath  the  flaring 
lights,  on  the  windy  platform  at  Bletchley,  waiting,  after  a  day  at  Stratford,  for  a 
belated  train  to  London,  I  reflected  that  genius  has  no  pedigree  nor  prescrip- 
tion, and  that  at  last  the  greatest  marvel  was,  not  that  the  tragedy  of  "  Hamlet" 
was  written  by  Shakespeare,  but  that  it  was  written  at  all. 


am 


MOLIERE 

Extracts  from  "  Moliere,"  by  Sir  Walter  Scott 
(1622-1673) 


J- 


ean-Baptiste  Poquelin  was  christened  at 
Paris,  January  15,  1622.  His  family  con- 
sisted of  decent  burghers,  who  had  for  two  or 
three  sfcnerations  followed  the  business  of  man- 
ufacturers  of  tapestry,  or  dealers  in  that  com- 
modity. Jean  Poquelin,  the  father  of  the  poet, 
also  enjoyed  the  office  of  valet-de-chambre  in 
the  royal  household.  He  endeavored  to  bring 
his  son  up  to  the  same  business,  but  finding  that 
it  was  totally  inconsistent  with  the  taste  and 
temper  of  the  young  Jean-Baptiste,  he  placed 
him  at  the  Jesuits'  College  of  Clermont,  now 
the  College  of  Louis-le-Grand.  Young  Poque- 
lin had  scarcely  terminated  his  course  of  philos- 
ophy when,  having  obtained  the  situation  of  assistant  and  successor  to  his  father, 
in  his  post  of  valet-de-chambre  to  the  king,  he  was  called  on  to  attend  Louis 
XIII.  in  a  tour  to  Narbonne,  which  lasted  nearly  a  year.  Doubtless,  the  oppor- 
tunities which  this  journey  afforded  him,  of  comparing  the  manners  and  follies  of 


MOLTERE  51 

the  royal  court  and  of  the  city  of  Paris,  with  those  which  he  found  still  existing 
in  the  provincial  towns  and  among  the  rural  noblesse,  were  not  lost  upon  the 
poet  by  whose  satirical  power  they  were  destined  to  be  immortalized. 

On  his  return  to  Paris,  young  Poquelin  commenced  the  study  of  the  law ; 
nay,  it  appears  probable  that  he  was  actually  admitted  an  adv^ocate.  But  the 
name  of  Moliere  must  be  added  to  the  long  list  of  those  who  have  become  con- 
spicuous for  success  in  the  fine  arts,  having  first  adopted  the  pursuit  of  them  in 
contradiction  to  the  will  of  their  parents  ;  and  in  whom,  according  to  Voltaire, 
nature  has  proved  stronger  than  education. 

Instead  of  frequenting  the  courts,  Jean-Baptiste  Poquelin  was  an  assiduous 
attendant  upon  such  companies  of  players  as  then  amused  the  metropolis,  and  at 
length  placed  himself  at  the  head  of  a  society  of  young  men,  who  began  by  act 
ing  plays  for  amusement,  and  ended  by  performing  with  a  view  to  emolument 
His  parents  were  greatly  distressed  by  the  step  he  had  taken.  He  had  plunged 
himself  into  a  profession  which  the  law  pronounced  infamous,  and  nothing  short 
of  rising  to  the  very  top  of  it  could  restore  his  estimation  in  society.  Whatever 
internal  confidence  of  success  the  young  Poquelin  might  himself  feel,  his  chance 
of  being  extricated  from  the  degradation  to  which  he  had  subjected  himself  must 
have  seemed  very  precarious  to  others  ;  and  we  cannot  be  surprised  that  his  re- 
lations were  mortified  and  displeased  with  his  conduct.  To  conciliate  their  prej- 
udices as  much  as  possible,  he  dropped  the  appellation  of  Poquelin  and  assumed 
that  of  Moliere,  that  he  might  not  tarnish  the  family  name.  But  with  what  in- 
difference should  we  now  read  the  name  of  Poquelin,  had  it  never  been  con- 
joined with  that  of  Moliere,  devised  to  supersede  and  conceal  it !  It  appears 
that  the  liberal  sentiments  of  the  royal  court  left  Moliere  in  possession  of  his 
office,  notwithstanding  his  change  of  profession. 

From  the  year  1646  to  1653,  it  is  only  known  that  Moliere  travelled  through 
France  as  the  manager  of  a  company  of  strolling  players.  It  is  said  that  with 
the  natural  turn  of  young  authors,  who  are  more  desirous  to  combine  scenes  of 
strong  emotion  than  of  comic  situation,  he  attempted  to  produce  a  tragedy 
called  "  The  Thebaid."  Its  indifferent  success  disgusted  him  with  the  buskin ; 
and  it  may  be  observed,  that  in  proportion  as  he  affects,  in  other  compositions, 
anything  approaching  to  the  tragic,  his  admirable  facility  of  expression  seems  to 
abandon  him,  and  he  becomes  stiff  and  flat. 

In  the  year  1653  Moliere's  brilliant  comedy  of  "  L'fitourdi "  was  performed  at 
Lyons,  and  gave  a  noble  presage  of  the  talents  of  its  illustrious  author.  The 
piece  is  known  to  English  readers  by  a  translation  entitled  "  Sir  Martin  Mar- 
plot," made  originally  by  the  celebrated  Duke  of  Newcastle,  and  adapted  to 
the  stage  by  the  pen  of  Dryden.  The  piece  turns  upon  the  schemes  formed  by 
a  clever  and  intriguing  valet  to  facilitate  the  union  betwixt  his  master  and  the 
heroine  of  the  scene,  all  of  which  are  successively  baffled  and  disconcerted  by 
the  bustling  interference  of  the  lover  himself.  The  French  original  has  infinitely 
the  superiority  ;  the  character  of  the  luckless  lover  is  drawn  with  an  exquisitely 
finer  pencil.      Lelie  is  an  inconse(iucntial,  light-headed,  gcntlcman-like  coxcomb, 


52  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

but  Sir  Martin  Marplot  is  a  fool.  In  the  English  drama,  the  author  seems  to 
have  considered  his  hero  as  so  thoroughly  stupid,  that  he  rewards  the  address  of 
the  intriguing  domestic  with  the  hand  of  the  lady.  The  French  author  gave  no 
occasion  for  this  gross  indecorum.  "L'Etourdi"  was  followed  by  "  Le  Dcpit 
Amoureux,"  an  admirable  entertainment  ;  although  the  French  critics  bestow 
some  censure  on  both  for  a  carelessness  of  style  to  which  a  foreigner  may  pro- 
fess himself  indifferent.  Both  these  performances  were  received  with  the  greatest 
applause  by  numerous  audiences ;  and  as  far  as  the  approbation  of  provincial 
theatres  could  confer  reputation,  that  of  Moliere  was  now  established. 

There  was,  however,  a  temptation  which  threatened  to  withdraw  him  from  the 
worship  of  Thalia.  This  was  an  ofifer  on  the  part  of  the  Prince  of  Conti,  who  had 
been  his  condisciple  at  college,  to  create  Moliere  his  secretary.  He  declined  this, 
on  account  of  his  devoted  attachment  to  his  own  profession,  strengthened  on  this 
occasion,  perhaps,  by  his  knowledge  how  the  place  had  become  vacant.  This,  it 
seems,  was  by  the  death  of  Sarrasin  (who  had  held  the  office),  in  consequence  of 
2in  niazroais  traitcmcnt  dc  Monscigneur  le  Priiice  de  Conti.  In  plain  English,  the 
prince  had,  with  the  fire-tongs,  knocked  down  his  secretary,  who  never  recovered 
from  the  effects  of  the  blow.  It  is  probable  that,  notwithstanding  the  laurel  chap- 
let  worn  by  Moliere,  he  had  little  faith  in  the  sic  cvitabile  fnliiicii. 

This  was  in  1654.  He  continued  to  perambulate  the  provinces  with  his  com- 
pany for  several  years  longer ;  in  1658  he  returned  to  Paris,  and  at  last,  through 
the  influence  of  his  patron  the  Prince  of  Conti,  was  introduced  to  Monsieur,  the 
king's  brother,  and  by  him  presented  to  the  king  and  queen.  On  October  24th, 
his  company  performed  in  presence  of  the  royal  family,  and  he  obtained  the  royal 
license  to  open  a  theatre  under  the  title  of  "  Troupe  de  Monsieur,"  in  opposition 
to,  or  in  emulation  of,  the  comedians  of  the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne.  The  pieces 
which  Moliere  had  already  composed  were  received  with  great  favor,  but  it  was 
not  until  1659,  that  he  commenced  the  honorable  satirical  war  upon  folly  and 
affectation  which  he  waged  for  so  many  years.  It  was  then  that  he  produced 
"  Les  Precieuses  Ridicules." 

The  piece  was  acted  for  the  first  time  November  18,  1659,  and  received  with 
unanimous  applause.  The  public,  like  children  admitted  behind  the  scenes,  saw, 
with  wonder  and  mirth,  the  trumpery  which  they  had  admired  as  crowns,  scep- 
tres, and  royal  robes,  when  beheld  at  a  distance — thus  learning  to  estimate  at 
their  real  value  the  affected  airs  of  super-excellence  and  transcendental  elegance 
assumed  by  the  frequenters  of  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  party  which  was  consequently  made  the  laughing-stock 
of  the  theatre  were  much  hurt  and  offended,  nor  was  the  injury  at  all  the  lighter 
that  some  of  them  had  sense  enough  to  feel  that  the  chastisement  was  deserved. 
They  had  no  remedy,  however,  but  to  swallow  their  chagrin  and  call  them- 
selves by  their  own  names  in  future.  Menage  expressed  his  own  recantation  in 
the  words  of  Clovis,  when  he  became  a  convert  to  Christianity,  and  told  his  as- 
sembled Franks  they  must  now  burn  the  idols  which  they  had  hitherto  adored. 
The  affectation  of  the  period,  such  as  we  have  described  it,  received  a  blow  no 


MOLIERE  53 

less  eflfectual  than  that  which  Ben  Jonson,  by  his  satire  called  "  Cynthia's  Revels," 
inflicted  on  the  kindred  folly  of  euphuism,  or  as  the  author  of  "  The  Baviad 
and  Maeviad  "  dealt  to  similar  affectations  of  our  own  day.  But  Moli^re  made  a 
body  of  formidable  enemies  among  the  powerful  and  learned,  whose  false  pre- 
tensions to  wit  and  elegance  he  had  so  rudely  exposed. 

Two  things  were  remarkable  as  attending  the  representation  of  this  excellent 
satire  :  first,  that  an  old  man,  starting  up  in  the  parterre,  exclaimed,  "  Courage, 
Moliere,  this  is  real  comedy  !  "  and,  secondly,  that  the  author  himself,  perceiving 
from  the  general  applause  that  he  had  touched  the  true  vein  of  composition,  de- 
clared his  purpose  henceforward  to  read  his  lessons  from  the  human  bosom,  in- 
stead of  studying  the  pages  of  Terence  and  Plautus. 

After  an  unsuccessful  effort  at  a  serious  piece  ("  Don  Garcie  de  Navarre,  ou 
Le  Prince  Jaloux  "),  Moliere  resumed  his  natural  bent ;  and  in  "  L'Ecole  des 
Maris  "  presented  one  of  his  best  compositions,  and  at  once  obliterated  all  recol- 
lection of  his  failure.  It  was  acted  at  Paris  with  unanimous  applause,  and  again 
represented  at  the  magnificent  entertainment  given  by  the  superintendent  of 
finances,  Fouquet,  to  Louis  XIV.  and  his  splendid  court. 

"L'Ecole  des  Femmes"  was  Moliere's  next  work  of  importance.  It  is  a 
comedy  of  the  highest  order.  An  old  gentleman,  who  had  been  an  intriguer  in 
his  youth  and  knew  (as  he  flattered  himself)  all  the  wiles  of  womankind,  en- 
deavors to  avoid  what  he  considers  as  the  usual  fate  of  husbands,  by  marrying 
his  ward,  a  beautiful  girl,  simple  almost  to  silliness,  but  to  whom  nature  has  given 
as  much  of  old  mother  Eve's  talent  for  persuasion  and  imposition  as  enables  her 
to  baffle  all  the  schemes  of  her  aged  admirer  and  unite  herself  to  a  young  gallant 
more  suited  to  her  age.  The  "  Country  Wife  "  of  Wycherly  is  an  imitation  of 
this  piece,  with  the  demerit  on  the  part  of  the  English  author  of  having  rendered 
licentious  a  plot  which,  in  Moliere's  hands,  is  only  gay. 

Although  this  piece  was  well  received  and  highly  applauded,  it  was  at  the 
same  time  severely  criticised  by  those  who  had  swallowed  without  digesting  the 
ridicule  which  the  author  had  heaped  on  the  Hotel  de  Rambouillet  in  the  "  Prg- 
cieuses  Ridicules,"  and  on  the  various  conceits  and  follies  of  the  court  in  "  Les 
Facheux."  Such  critics  having  shown  themselves  too  wise  to  express  the  pain 
which  they  felt  on  their  own  account,  now  set  up  as  guardians  of  the  purity  of 
the  national  morals  and  language.  A  naive  expression  used  by  Agnes  was  repre- 
sented as  depraving  the  one  ;  a  low  and  somewhat  vulgar  phrase  was  insisted 
upon  as  calculated  to  ruin  the  other.  Tiiis  affected  severity  in  morals  and  gram- 
mar did  not  impose  on  the  public,  who  were  quite  aware  of  the  motives  of  critics 
who  endeavored  to  ground  such  formidable  charges  on  foundations  so  limited. 
The  celebrated  Boileau  drew  his  pen  in  defence  of  his  friend,  in  whose  most  bur- 
lesque expression  there  truly  lurked  a  learned  and  useful  moral  :  "  Let  the  envi- 
ous exclaim  against  thee,"  he  said,  "  because  thy  scenes  are  agreeable  to  all  the 
vulgar ;  if  thou  wert  less  acquainted  with  the  art  of  pleasing,  thou  wouldst  be 
enabled  to  please  even  thy  censors."  Moliere  himself  wrote  a  defence  of 
"  L'Ecole  des  Femmes,"  "  in  which,"  says  M.  Taschereau,  "  he  had  the  good  fort- 


54  ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 

une  to  escape  the  most  dangerous  fault  of  an  author  writing  upon  his  own  com- 
positions, and  to  exhibit  wit  where  some  people  would  only  have  shown  vanity 
and  self-conceit." 

In  the  evening  of  the  same  day  which  saw  his  next  comedy,  "  Le  Mariage 
Force,"  there  came  out  as  a  part  of  the  roval  fete,  the  three  first  acts,  or  rough 
sketch,  of  the  celebrated  satire,  entitled  "Tartuffe,"  one  of  the  most  powerful  of 
Moliere's  compositions.  It  was  applauded,  but  from  the  clamor  excited  against 
the  poet  and  the  performance,  as  an  attack  on  religion,  instead  of  its  impious 
and  insidious  adversary,  hvpocrisy,  the  representation  was  for  the  time  inter- 
dicted; a  fortunate  circumstance,  perhaps,  since  in  consequence  the  drama  under- 
went a  sedulous  revision,  given  by  Moliere  to  few  of  his  performances. 

"  Le  Festin  de  Pierre" — the  Feast  of  the  Statue — well  known  to  the  modern 
stage  under  the  name  of  "  Don  Juan,"  was  the  next  vehicle  of  Moliere's  satire. 
The  story,  borrowed  from  the  Spanish,  is  well  known.  In  giving  the  sentiments 
of  the  libertine  Spaniard,  the  author  of  "Tartuffe"  could  not  suppress  his  resent- 
ment against  the  party,  by  whose  interest  with  the  king  that  piece  had  been  ex- 
cluded from  the  stage,  or  at  least  its  representation  suspended.  "  The  profession 
of  a  hypocrite,"  says  Don  Juan,  "  has  marvellous  advantages.  The  imposture  is 
always  respected,  and  although  it  may  be  detected,  must  never  be  condemned. 
Other  human  vices  are  exposed  to  censure  and  may  be  attacked  boldly.  Hypoc- 
risy alone  enjoys  a  privilege  which  stops  the  mouth  of  the  satirist,  and  enjoys 
the  repose  of  sovereign  impunity."  This  expression,  with  some  other  passages 
in  the  piece  (the  general  tenor  of  which  is  certainly  not  very  edifying),  called 
down  violent  clamors  upon  the  imprudent  author ;  some  critics  went  so  far  as 
to  invoke  the  spiritual  censure  and  the  doom  of  the  civil  magistrate  on  Moliere 
as  the  atheist  of  his  own  "  Festin  de  Pierre."  He  was,  however,  on  this  as  on 
other  occasions,  supported  by  the  decided  favor  of  the  king,  who  then  allowed 
Moliere's  company  to  take  the  title  of  "  Comediens  du  Roi,"  and  bestowed  on 
them  a  pension  of  7,000  livres,  thereby  showing  how  li'ttle  he  was  influenced 
by  the  clamors  of  the  poet's  enemies,  though  attacking  his  mind  on  a  weak  point. 

In  the  month  of  September,  1665,  the  king  having  commanded  such  an 
entertainment  to  be  prepared,  the  sketch  or  impromptu  called  "L'AmourMe- 
decin  "  was,  in  the  course  of  five  days,  composed,  got  up,  as  the  players  call  it, 
and  represented.  In  this  sketch,  slight  as  it  was,  Moliere  contrived  to  declare 
war  against  a  new  and  influential  body  of  enemies.  This  was  the  medical  faculty, 
which  he  had  slightly  attacked  in  the  "Festin  de  Pierre."  Every  science  has  its 
weak  points,  and  is  rather  benefited  than  injured  by  the  satire  which,  putting 
pedantry  and  quackery  out  of  fashion,  opens  the  way  to  an  enlightened  pursuit 
of 'knowledge.  The  medical  faculty  at  Paris,  in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  was  at  a  very  low  ebb.  Almost  every  physician  was  attached  to  some 
particular  form  of  treatment,  which  he  exercised  on  his  patients  without  dis- 
tinction, and  which  probably  killed  in  as  many  instances  as  it  effected  a  cure. 
Their  exterior,  designed,  doubtless,  to  inspire  respect  by  its  peculiar  garb  and 
fonnal  manner,  was  in  itself  matter  of  ridicule.     They  ambled  on  mules  through 


MOLIERE  55 

the  city  of  Paris,  attired  in  an  antique  and  grotesque  dress,  the  jest  of  its 
laughter-loving  people,  and  the  dread  of  those  who  were  unfortunate  enough  to 
be  their  patients.  The  consultations  of  these  sages  were  conducted  in  a  barbar- 
ous Latinity,  or  if  they  condescended  to  use  the  popular  language,  they  dis- 
figured it  with  unnecessary  profusion  of  technical  terms,  or  rendered  it  unintelli- 
gible by  a  prodigal  tissue  of  scholastic  formalities  of  expression. 

The  venerable  dulness  and  pedantic  ignorance  of  the  faculty  was  incensed  at 
the  ridicule  cast  upon  it  in  "  L'Amour  M(§decin,"  especially  as  four  of  its  most 
distinguished  members  were  introduced  under  Greek  names,  invented  by  Boileau 
for  his  friend's  use.  The  consultation  held  by  these  sages,  which  respects  every- 
thing save  the  case  of  the  patient — the  ceremonious  difficulty  with  which  they  are 
at  first  brought  to  deliver  their  opinions — the  vivacity  and  fury  with  which  each 
finally  defends  his  own,  menacing  the  instant  death  of  the  patient  if  any  other 
treatment  be  observed,  seemed  all  to  the  public  highly  comical,  and  led  many  re- 
flecting men  to  thinjc  Lisette  was  not  far  wrong  in  contending  that  a  patient 
should  not  be  said  to  die  of  a  fever  or  a  consumption,  but  of  four  doctors  and 
two  apothecaries.  The  farce  enlarged  the  sphere  of  Moliere's  enemies,  but  as 
the  poet  suffered  none  of  the  faculty  to  prescribe  for  him,  their  resentment  was 
of  the  less  consequence. 

The  "  Misanthrope,"  accounted  by  the  French  critics  the  most  correct  of 
Moliere's  compositions,  was  the  next  vehicle  of  his  satire  against  the  follies  of 
the  age.  Except  for  the  usual  fault  of  his  gratuitously  adopted  coarseness,  it  is 
admirably  imitated  in  the  "  Plain  Dealer,"  of  Wycherly.  Alceste  is  an  upright 
and  m'anly  character,  but  rude,  and  impatient  even  of  the  ordinary  civilities  of 
life  and  the  harmless  hypocrisies  of  complaisance,  by  which  the  ugliness  of  human 
nature  is  in  some  degree  disguised.  He  quarrels  with  his  friend  Philinte  for  re- 
ceiving the  bow  of  a  man  he  despises  ;  and  with  his  mistress  for  enjoying  a  little 
harmless  ridicule  of  her  friend,  when  her  back  is  turned.  He  tells  a  conceited 
poet  that  he  prefers  the  sense  and  simplicity  of  an  old  ballad  to  the  false  wit  of  a 
modern  sonnet — he  proves  his  judgment  to  be  just — and  receives  a  challenge 
from  the  poet  in  reward  of  his  criticism.  Such  a  character,  placed  in  opposition 
to  the  false  and  fantastic  affectations  of  the  day,  afforded  a  wide  scope  for  the 
satire  of  Moliere.  The  situation  somewhat  resembles  that  of  Eraste,  in  "  Les 
Facheux."  But  the  latter  personage  is  only  interrupted  by  fools  and  impostors 
during  a  walk  in  the  Tuileries,  where  he  expects  to  meet  his  mistress  ;  the  dis- 
tress of  Alceste  lies  deeper — he  is  thwarted  by  pretenders  and  coxcombs  in  the 
paths  of  life  itself,  and  his  peculiar  temper  renders  him  impatient  of  being  pressed 
and  shouldered  by  them  ;  so  that,  like  an  irrital)le  man  in  a  crowd,  he  resents 
those  inconveniences  to  which  men  of  equanimity  submit,  not  as  a  matter  of 
choice,  indeed,  but  as  a  point  of  necessity.  The  greater  correctness  of  this  piece 
may  be  owing  to  the  lapse  of  nine  months  (an  unusual  term  of  repose  for  the 
muse  of  Moliere)  betwixt  the  appearance  of  "  L'Amour  M(5decin  "  and  that  of 
the  "  Misanthrope."  Yet  this  chef-d'(jeuvre  was  at  first  coldly  received  by  the 
Parisian  audience,  and  to  render  it  more  attractive,  Moliere  was  compelled  to  at- 


56  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

tach  to  its  representation  the  lively  farce  of  "  Le  Medecin  malgr^  lui."  In  a 
short  time  the  merit  of  the  "  Misantlirope  "  became  acknowledged  by  the  public, 
and  even  many  of  those  critics  who  had  hitherto  been  hostile,  united  in  its  praise. 
Yet  scandal  was  not  silent  ;  for  Moliere  was  loudly  censured,  as  having,  in  the 
person  of  Alceste,  ridiculed  the  Duke  de  Montausier,  a  man  of  honor  and  virtue, 
but  of  blunt,  uncourteous  manners.  The  duke,  informed  that  he  had  been 
brought  on  the  stage  by  Moliere,  threatened  vengeance  ;  but  being  persuaded  to 
see  the  plav,  he  sought  out  the  author  instantly,  embraced  him  repeatedly,  and 
assured  him  that  if  he  had  really  thought  of  him  when  composing  the  "  Misan- 
thrope," he  regarded  it  as  an  honor  which  he  could  never  forget. 

But  not  even  the  praises  paid  to  the  "  Misanthrope,"  though  a  piece  of  a 
mood  much  higher  than  "Le  Medecin  malgr^  lui,"  satisfied  Moliere.  "  Vons  ver- 
rcz  bicn  autre  chose"  said  he  to  Boileau,  when  the  latter  congratulated  him  on 
the  success  of  the  chef-d'oeuvre  which  we  have  just  named.  He  anticipated  the 
success  of  the  most  remarkable  of  his  performances,  the  celebrated  "  Tartuffe," 
in  which  he  has  unmasked  and  branded  vice,  as  in  his  lighter  pieces  he  has  chas- 
tised folly.  This  piece  had  been  acted  before  Louis,  before  his  queen,  and  his 
mother,  and  at  the  palace  of  the  great  Prince  of  Condd  ;  but  the  scruples  infused 
into  the  king  long  induced  him  to  hesitate  ere  he  removed  the  interdict  which 
prohibited  its  representation.  Neither  were  these  scruples  yet  removed.  Per- 
mission was,  indeed,  given  to  represent  the  piece,  but  under  the  title  of  the  "  Im- 
postor," and  calling  the  principal  person  Panulphe,  for  it  seems  the  name  of 
Tartuffe  was  particularly  offensive.  The  king,  having  left  Paris  for  the  army, 
the  president  of  the  parliament  of  Paris  prohibited  anv  further  representation  of 
the  obnoxious  piece,  thus  disguised,  although  licensed  by  his  majesty.  Louis  did 
not  resent  this  interference,  and  two  compositions  of  Moliere  were  interposed 
betwixt  the  date  of  the  suspension  which  we  have  noticed,  and  the  final  permis- 
sion to  bring  "  Tartuffe  "  on  the  stage.  These  were,  "Melicerte,"  a  species  of 
heroic  pastoral,  in  which  Moliere  certainly  did  not  excel,  and  "  Le  Sicilien,  ou 
L' Amour  Peintre,"  a  few  lively  scenes  linked  together,  so  as  to  form  a  pleasing 
introduction  to  several  of  those  dances  in  costume,  or  ballets,  as  they  were  called, 
in  which  Louis  himself  often  assumed  a  character. 

At  length,  in  August,  1667,  "  Le  Tartuffe,"  so  long  suppressed,  appeared  on 
the  stage,  and  in  the  depth  and  power  of  its  composition  left  all  authors  of  com- 
edy far  behind.  The  art  with  which  the  "  Impostor  "  is  made  to  develop  his  real 
character,  without  any  of  the  usual  soliloquies  or  addresses  to  a  confidant,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  audience,  has  been  always  admired  as  inimitable.  The  heart  of  a 
man  who  had  least  desired,  and  could  worst  bear  close  investigation,  is  discov- 
ered and  ascertained,  as  navigators  trace  the  lines  and  bearings  of  an  unknown 
coast.  The  persons  among  whom  this  illustrious  hypocrite  performs  the  princi- 
pal character,  are  traced  with  equal  distinctness.  The  silly  old  mother,  obstinate 
from  age  as  well  as  bigotry  ;  the  modest  and  sensible  Cl^ante  ;  his  brother-in-law, 
Orgon,  prepared  to  be  a  dupe  by  prepossession  and  self-opinion  ;  Damis,  impetu- 
ous and  unreflecting ;  Mariane,  gentle  and  patient ;  with  the  hasty  and  petulant 


MOLIERE  S7 

sallies  of  Dorine,  who  ridicules  the  family  she  serves  with  affection  ;  are  all  faith- 
fully drawn,  and  contribute  their  own  share  on  the  effect  of  the  piece,  while  they 
assist  in  bringing  on  the  catastrophe.  In  this  catastrophe,  however,  there  is 
something  rather  inartificial.  It  is  brought  about  too  much  by  a  tour  de  force, 
too  entirely  by  the  dc  par  Ic  ro:\  to  deserve  the  praise  bestowed  on  the  rest  of 
the  piece.  It  resembles,  in  short,  too  nearly  the  receipt  for  making  the  "  Beg- 
gars' Opera  "  end  happily,  by  sending  someone  to  call  out  a  reprieve.  But  as 
it  manifested  at  the  same  time  the  power  of  the  prince,  and  afforded  opportu- 
nity for  panegyric  on  his  acuteness"  in  detecting  and  punishing  fraud,  Moliere,  it 
is  certain,  might  have  his  own  good  reasons  for  unwinding  and  disentangling  the 
plot  by  means  of  an  exempt  or  king's  messenger. 

"George  Dandin  "  was  acted  July  i8,  1668.  On  September  3,  in  the  same 
year,  the  moral  comedy  of  "  L'Avare  "  was  presented  to  the  public  by  the  fertile 
muse  of  our  author.  The  general  conception  of  the  piece,  as  well  as  many  of  the 
individual  scenes,  are  taken  from  Plautus,  but  adapted  to  French  society  with  a 
degree  of  felicity  belonging  to  Moliere  alone.  Omitting  "  Les  Amants  Magni- 
fiques,"  called  by  Moliere  a  minor  comedy,  but  which  may  be  rather  considered 
as  a  piece  of  framework  for  the  introduction  of  scenic  pageantry,  and  which  is 
only  distinguished  by  some  satirical  shafts  directed  against  the  now  obsolete 
folly  of  judicial  astrology,  we  hasten  to  notice  a  masterpiece  of  Molifere's  art  in 
"  Le  Bourgeois  Gentilhomme."  This  piece  was  written  to  please  the  court  and 
gentry,  at  the  expense  of  the  nouveaux  riches,  who,  rendered  wealthy  by  the  sud- 
den acquisition  of  immense  fortune,  become  desirous  to  emulate  such  as  have 
been  educated  in  the  front  ranks  of  society,  in  those  accomplishments,  whether 
mental  or  personal,  which  cannot  be  gracefully  acquired  after  the  early  part  of 
life  is  past.  A  grave,  elderly  gentleman  learning  to  dance  is  proverbially  ridicu- 
lous ;  but  the  same  absurdity  attaches  to  everyone  who,  suddenly  elevated  from 
his  own  sphere,  becomes  desirous  of  imitating,  in  the  most  minute  particulars, 
those  who  are  denizens  of  that  to  which  he  is  raised.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to 
notice  that  the  ridicule  directed  against  such  characters  as  Monsieur  Jourdain 
properly  applies,  not  to  their  having  made  their  fortunes,  if  by  honest  means,  but 
to  their  being  ambitious  to  distinguish  themselves  by  qualities  inconsistent  with 
their  age,  habits  of  thinking,  and  previous  manners. 

The  last  of  this  great  author's  labors  was  at  once  directed  against  the  faculty 
of  medicine,  and  aimed  at  its  most  vulnerable  point — namely,  the  intluencc  used 
by  some  unworthy  members  of  the  profession  to  avail  themselves  of  the  nervous 
fears  and  unfounded  apprehensions  of  hypochondriac  patients.  Instead  of  treat- 
ing imaginary  maladies  as  a  mental  disease  requiring  moral  medicine,  there  have 
been  found  in  all  times  medical  men  capable  of  listening  to  the  rehearsal  of 
these  brain-sick  whims  as  if  they  were  real  complaints,  prescribing  for  them  as  . 
such,  and  receiving  the  wages  of  imposition,  instead  of  the  honorable  reward  of 
science.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  faculty  has  always  pos- 
sessed members  of  a  spirit  to  condemn  and  regret  such  despicable  practices. 
There  cannot  be  juster  objects  of  satire  than  such  empirics,  nor  is  there  a  foible 


58  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

more  deserving  of  ridicule  than  the  selfish  timidity  of  the  hypochondriac,  who, 
ungrateful  for  the  store  of  good  health  with  which  nature  has  endowed  him,  as- 
sumes the  habitual  precautions  of  an  infirm  patient. 

Moliere  has  added  much  to  the  humor  of  the  piece  by  assigning  to  the  Ma- 
lade  Imaginaire  a  strain  of  frugality  along  with  his  love  of  medicine,  which 
leads  him  to  take  eveiy  mode  that  may  diminish  the  expense  of  his  supposed  in- 
disposition. The  expenses  of  a  sick-bed  are  often  talked  of,  but  it  is  only  the 
imaginary  valetudinarian  who  thinks  of  carrying  economy  into  that  department ; 
the  real  patient  has  other  things  to  think  of.  Argan,  therefore,  is  discovered 
taxing  his  apothecary's  bill,  at  once  delighting  his  ear  with  the  flowery  language 
of  the  pharmacopoeia,  and  gratifying  his  frugal  disposition  by  clipping  off  some 
items  and  reducing  others,  and  arriving  at  the  double  conclusion,  first,  that  if  his 
apothecary  does  not  become  more  reasonable,  he  cannot  afford  to  be  a  sick  man 
any  longer ;  and  secondly,  that  as  he  has  swallowed  fewer  drugs  by  one-third  this 
month  than  he  had  done  the  last,  it  was  no  wonder  that  he  was  not  so  well.  The 
inference,  ''Jc  Ic  dirai  a  Monsiciu^  Piirgon,  afin  qii  il  victtc  ordrc  a  ccla"  is  irre- 
sistibly comic. 

As  the  Malade  Imaginaire  was  the  last  character  in  which  Moliere  ap- 
peared, it  is  here  necessary  to  say  a  few  words  upon  his  capacity  as  an  actor. 
He  bore,  according  to  one  contemporary,  and  with  justice,  the  first  rank  among 
the  performers  of  his  line.  He  was  a  comedian  from  top  to  toe.  He  seemed  to 
possess  more  voices  than  one  ;  besides  which,  every  limb  had  its  expression — a 
step  in  advance  or  retreat,  a  wink,  a  smile,  a  nod,  expressed  more  in  his  action, 
than  the  greatest  talker  could  explain  in  words  in  the  course  of  an  hour.  He 
was,  says  another  contemporary,  neither  corpulent  nor  otherwise,  rather  above 
the  middle  size,  with  a  noble  carriage  and  well-formed  limbs  ;  he  walked  with 
dignity,  had  a  very  serious  aspect,  the  nose  and  mouth  rather  large,  with  full  lips, 
a  dark  complexion,  the  eyebrows  black  and  strongly  marked,  and  a  command  of 
countenance  which  rendered  his  physiognomy  formed  to  express  comedy.  A 
less  friendly  pen  (that  of  the  author  of  "  LTnpromptu  de  I'Hotel  de  Cond^") 
has  caricatured  Moliere  as  coming  on  the  stage  with  his  head  thrown  habitually 
back,  his  nose  turned  up  into  the  air,  his  hands  on  his  sides  with  an  affectation  of 
negligence,  and  (what  would  seem  in  England  a  gross  affectation,  but  which  was 
tolerated  in  Paris  as  an  expression  of  the  superbia  gucssita  meritis)  his  peruke 
always  environed  by  a  crown  of  laurels.  But  the  only  real  defect  in  his  perform- 
ance arose  from  an  habitual  lioquct,  or  slight  hiccough,  which  he  had  acquired  by 
attempting  to  render  himself  master  of  an  extreme  volubility  of  enunciation,  but 
which  his  exquisite  art  contrived  on  almost  all  occasions  successfully  to  disguise. 

Thus  externally  fitted  for  his  art,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  who  pos- 
sessed so  much  comedy  in  his  conceptions  of  character,  must  have  had  equal 
judgment  and  taste  in  the  theatrical  expression,  and  that  only  the  poet  himself 
could  fully  convey  what  he  alone  could  have  composed.  He  performed  the 
principal  character  in  almost  all  his  own  pieces,  and  adhered  to  the  stage  even 
when  many  motives  occurred  to  authorize  his  retirement. 


58 


vND   AUTHOR-: 


''■'T  deserving 

.:.     v..^     :3i. 

■Itish  timiu,.. 

hypochondriac,  who, 

.  ateful  for  t 

■  "1  Iviilth 

with  which  r^ 

IS  endowed  him,  as- 

sumes  the  h 

Moi;- 

!    tO   LllC  llUi 

iiur  ..,;    the  pioc'o   by 

asMgning  to  the  Ma- 

lade   In 

•  i"     f riif-  ilif  1' 

''■■'■>•     A-ith  hi-^  '■-■'  '■ 

,,("   „i,.,i;,  ;,ie,   which 

lead 

.h  the 

'>fi'<ed  in- 

.  of  a  sick-l 

often  talk( 

\-  the 

lio  thinks  ■ 

:i(r  econom 

'    f 

f^ltings  to  ^ 

'.     Argan,  ;,. 

■\ 

once  dc 

ol  ti-  la,  and  gratif^intj  1 

others,  and  arrivin, 

I  become  more  rea^ 

,  and  secondly,  that  as  he  ; 
month  than  he  had  done  the  last,  il  \vh 
inference,  "Jc  le  dirai  ■'■  icar  Pi: 

si'^tibl^,'  comir. 


his  ear  with  the  _e 

iisposition  by  clijiping  oti  some 

'  'ion,  first,  that  if  his 

..  jid  to  be  a  sick  man 

1  drugs  by  one-third  this 

at  he  was  not  so  well.    The 

,'  tnette  crdre  it  cela"  is  irre- 

!         ,.    which 
11  his  capacity  as  an  actor. 


pos^  in  one  ;  beside 

ji'jaxuA  TA  aaaijoM  lo  anijoH  aHx  ta  wayjakx  a 

,an,9,^^aau^,jioTaAy 
the  '  -.izp,  wit  ')le  can 


gasfloao 


dignity,  had  a  very  serious 

a  dark  c   -    '      '  ■      ' '-  -         .>r'j\' :.  L-iaL 

countcn  jd  his  \A\\ 

less  frieu 

has  caricatii 

back,  his  n. 

negligence, 

tolerated  in 

vs  envii  laurci 


■,-.  ^ 


ng  on  the 


d  on  almu 
fitted  fur  liis 
rnedy  in  his  couli 
in  the  theatrical 
what  he  alom 
'most  all  hi 
urred  to  auo  .. 


with 

ith  lull  lips, 

■.ommand  of 

"inedv.     A 

Cond6  ") 

/n  habitually 

;s  vriih  an  ;  '       '    ' '         if 

:\  cration,  b. as 

mentis)  his  peruke 
t  in  his  }>f-rform- 

:,    '•,  IllCM    lie    '-■      •  :■     '    '     - 

•iubility  of 
success! 
be  no  doubt  that  he  who  pos- 
I  •   1  '    -   must  have  had  equal 
illy  the  poet  himself 
omposed.     He  performed  the 
aid  adhered  to  the  stage  even 
lement. 


MOLIERE  59 

We  do  not  reckon  it  any  great  temptation  to  Moliere  that  the  Academy 
should  have  opened  its  arms  to  receive  him,  under  condition  that  he  would  aban- 
don the  profession  of  an  actor  ;  but  the  reason  which  he  assigned  for  declining  to 
purchase  the  honor  at  the  rate  proposed  is  worthy  of  being  mentioned.  "  What 
can  induce  you  to  hesitate  ? "  said  Boileau,  charged  by  the  Academicians  with 
the  negotiation.  "  A  point  of  honor,"  replied  Moliere.  "  Now,"  answered  his 
friend,  "  what  honor  can  lie  in  blacking  your  face  with  mustachios  and  assuming 
the  burlesque  disguise  of  a  buffoon,  in  order  to  be  cudgelled  on  a  public  stage  ? " 
"  The  point  of  honor,"  answered  Moliere,  "  consists  in  my  not  deserting  more 
than  a- hundred  persons,  whom  my  personal  exertions  are  necessary  to  support." 
The  Academy  afterward  did  honor  to  themselves  and  justice  to  Moliere  by  plac- 
ing his  bust  in  their  hall,  with  this  tasteful  and  repentant  inscription  : 

"  Nothing  is  wanting  to  the  glory  of  Moliere.  Moliere  was  wanting  to 
ours  !  " 

That  Moliere  alleged  no  false  excuse  for  continuing  on  the  stage,  was  evi- 
dent when,  in  the  latter  years  of  his  life,  his  decaying  health  prompted  him 
strongly  to  resign.  He  had  been  at  all  times  of  a  delicate  constitution,  and  liable 
to  pulmonary  affections,  which  were  rather  palliated  than  cured  by  submission 
during  long  intervals  to  a  milk  diet,  and  by  frequenting  the  country,  for  which 
purpose  he  had  a  villa  at  Autcuil,  near  Paris.  The  malady  grew  more  alarming 
from  time  to  time,  and  the  exertions  of  voice  and  person  required  by  the  profes- 
sion tended  to  increase  its  sev^erity.  On  February  17,  1673,  he  became  worse 
than  usual.  Baron,  an  actor  of  the  highest  rank  and  of  his  own  training,  joined 
with  the  rest  of  the  company  in  remonstrating  against  their  patron  going  on  in 
the  character  of  Argan.  Moliere  answered  them  in  the  same  spirit  which  dic- 
tated his  reply  to  Boileau.  "  There  are  fifty  people,"  he  said,  "  who  must  want 
their  daily  bread,  if  the  spectacle  is  put  off.  I  should  reproach  myself  with  their 
distress  if  I  suffered  them  to  sustain  such  a  loss,  having  the  power  to  prevent  it." 

He  acted  accordingly  that  evening,  but  suffered  most  cruelly  in  the  task  of 
disguising  his  sense  of  internal  pain.  A  singular  contrast  it  was  betwixt  the 
state  of  the  actor  and  the  fictitious  character  which  he  represented.  Moliere  was 
disguising  his  real  and,  as  it  proved,  his  dying  agonies,  in  order  to  give  utterance 
and  interest  to  the  feigned  or  fancied  complaints  of  Le  Malade  Imaginaire,  and 
repressing  the  voice  of  mortal  sufferance  to  affect  that  of  an  imaginary  hypo- 
chondriac. At  length,  on  arriving  at  the  concluding  interlude,  in  which,  assent- 
ing to  the  oath  administered  to  him  as  the  candidate  for  medical  honors  in  the 
mock  ceremonial,  by  which  he  engages  to  adminster  the  remedies  prescribed  by 
the  ancients,  whether  right  or  wrong,  and  never  to  use  anv  other  than  those  ap- 
proved by  the  college,  as  Moliere,  in  the  character  of  Argan,  replied,  "Juro," 
the  faculty  had  a  full  and  fatal  revenge.  The  wheel  was  broken  at  the  cistern — 
he  had  fallen  in  a  convulsive  fit.  The  entertainment  was  hurried  to  a  conclu- 
sion, and  Moliere  was  carried  home.  His  cough  returned  with  violence,  and  he 
was  found  to  have  burst  a  blood-vessel.  A  priest  was  sent  for,  and  two  scrupu- 
lous ecclesiastics  of  Saint  Eustace's  parish  distinguished  themselves  by  refusing 


GO  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

to  administer  the  last  consolations  to  a  player  and  the  author  of  "Tartuffe."  A 
third,  of  better  principles,  came  too  late ;  Moliere  was  insensible,  and  choked  by 
the  quantity  of  blood  which  he  could  not  discharge.  Two  poor  Sisters  of  Char- 
ity who  had  often  experienced  his  bounty,  supported  him  as  he  expired. 

Bigotry  persecuted  to  the  grave  the  lifeless  reliques  of  the  man  of  genius. 
Harlai,  Archbishop  of  Paris,  who  himself  died  of  the  consequences  of  a  course 
of  continued  debauchery,  thought  it  necessary  to  show  himself  as  intolerantly 
strict  in  form  as  he  was  licentious  in  practice.  He  forbade  the  burial  of  a  come- 
dian's remains.  Madame  Moliere  went  to  throw  herself  at  the  feet  of  Louis 
XIV.,  but  with  impolitic  temerity  her  petition  stated,  that  if  her  deceased  hus- 
band had  been  criminal  in  composing  and  acting  dramatic  pieces,  his  majesty,  at 
whose  command  and  for  whose  amusement  he  had  done  so,  must  be  criminal  also. 
This  argument,  though  in  itself  unanswerable,  was  too  bluntly  stated  to  be  favor- 
ably receiv^ed  ;  Louis  dismissed  the  suppliant  with  the  indifferent  answer,  that  the 
matter  depended  on  the  Archbishop  of  Paris.  The  king,  however,  sent  private 
orders  to  Harlai  to  revoke  the  interdict  against  the  decent  burial  of  the  man, 
whose  talents  during  his  lifetime  his  majesty  had  delighted  to  honor.  The  fu- 
neral took  place  accordingly,  but,  like  that  of  Ophelia,  "  with  maimed  rites."  The 
curate  of  Saint  Eustace  had  directions  not  to  give  his  attendance,  and  the  corpse 
was  transported  from  his  place  of  residence  and  taken  to  the  burial-ground  with- 
out being,  as  usual,  presented  at  the  parish  church.  This  was  not  all.  A  large 
assemblage  of  the  lower  classes  seemed  to  threaten  an  interruption  of  the  funeral 
ceremony.  But  their  fanaticism  was  not  proof  against  a  thousand  francs  which 
the  widow  of  Moliere  dispersed  among  them  from  the  windows,  thus  purchasing 
for  the  remains  of  her  husband  an  uninterrupted  passage  to  their  last  abode. 


JOHN   MILTON 

(1608- 1 6 74) 

>OHN  Milton  was  born  in  London  on  December  9,  1608.  His  father, 
in  early  life,  had  suffered  for  conscience  sake,  having  been  disin- 
herited upon  his  abjuring  the  Catholic  faith.  He  pursued  the  la- 
borious profession  of  a  scrivener,  and  having  realized  an  ample  fort- 
une, retired  into  the  country  to  enjoy  it.  Educated  at  Oxford,  he 
gave  his  son  the  best  education  that  the  age  afforded.  At  first  young  Milton  had 
the  benefit  of  a  private  tutor;  from  him  he  was  removed  to  St.  Paul's  school; 
next  he  proceeded  to  Christ's  College,  Cambridge  ;  and  finally,  after  several  years 
preparation  by  extensive  reading,  he  pursued  a  course  of  continental  travel.  It 
is  to  be  observed  that  his  tutor,  Thomas  Young,  was  a  Puritan,  and  there  is  rea- 
son to  believe  that  Puritan  politics  prevailed  among  the  fellows  of  his  college. 


JOHN    MILTON 


61 


This  must  not  be  forgotten  in  speculating  on  Milton's  public  life,  and  his  in- 
exorable hostility  to  the  established  government  in  church  and  state  ;  for  it  will 
thus  appear  probable  that  he  was  at  no  time 
withdrawn  from  the  influence  of  Puritan 
connections. 

In  1632,  having  taken  the  degree  of 
M.  A.,  Milton  finally  quitted  the  University, 
leaving  behind  him  a  very  brilliant  reputa- 
tion, and  a  general  good-will  in  his  own 
college.  His  father  had  now  retired  from 
London,  and  lived  upon  his  own  estate  at 
Horton,  in  Buckinghamshire.  In  this  rural 
solitude  Milton  passed  the  next  five  years, 
resorting  to  London  only  at  rare  intervals, 
for  the  jHirchase  of  books  or  music.  His 
time  was  chiefly  occupied  with  the  study  of 
Greek  and  Roman,  and,  no  doubt,  also  of 
Italian  literature.  But  that  he  was  not  neg- 
ligent of  composition,  and  that  he  applied 
himself  with  great  zeal  to  the  culture  of  his  native  literature,  we  have  a  splendid 
record  in  his  "  Comus,"  which,  upon  the  strongest  presumptions,  is  ascribed  to 
this  period  of  his  life.  In  the  same  neighborhood,  and  within  the  same  five 
years,  it  is  believed  that  he  produced  also  the  "Arcades,"  and  the  "  Lycidas,"  to- 
gether with  "  L'Allegro,"  and  "  II  Penseroso." 

In  1637  Milton's  mother  died,  and  in  the  following  year  he  commenced  his 
travels.  The  state  of  Europe  confined  his  choice  of  ground  to  France  and  Italy. 
The  former  excited  in  him  but  little  interest.  After  a  short  stay  at  Paris  he  pur- 
sued the  direct  route  to  Nice,  where  he  embarked  for  Genoa,  and  thence  pro- 
ceeded to  Pisa,  Florence,  Rome,  and  Naples. 

Sir  Henry  Wotton  had  recommended,  as  the  rule  of  his  conduct,  a  celebrated 
Italian  proverb,  inculcating  the  policy  of  reserve  and  dissimulation.  From  a 
practised  diplomatist,  this  advice  was  characteristic  ;  but  it  did  not  suit  the  frank- 
ness of  Milton's  manners,  nor  the  nobleness  of  his  mind.  He  has  himself  stated 
to  us  his  own  rule  of  conduct,  which  was  to  move  no  questions  of  controversy, 
yet  not  to  evade  them  when  pressed  upon  him  by  others.  Upon  this  principle 
he  acted,  not  without  some  ofl"ence  to  his  associates,  nor  wholly  without  danger 
to  himself.  But  the  offence,  doubtless,  was  blended  with  respect ;  the  danger 
was  passed;  and  he  returned  home  with  all  his  purposes  fulfilled.  He  had  con- 
versed with  Galileo  ;  he  had  seen  wliatever  was  most  interesting  in  the  monu- 
ments of  Roman  grandeur,  or  the  triumphs  of  Italian  art  ;  and  he  could  report 
with  truth  that,  in  spite  of  his  religion,  everywhere  undissembled,  he  had  been 
honored  by  the  attentions  of  the  great,  and  by  the  compliments  of  the  learned. 

After  fifteen  months  of  absence,  Milton  found  himself  again  in  London  at  a 
crisis  of  unusual  interest.     The  king  was  on  the  eve  of  his  second  expedition 


62  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

against  the  Scotch  ;  and  we  may  suppose  Milton  to  have  been  watching  the 
course  of  events  with  profound  anxiety,  not  without  some  anticipation  of  the 
patriotic  labor  which  awaited  him.  Meantime  he  occupied  himself  with  the  edu- 
cation of  his  sister's  two  sons,  and  soon  after,  by  way  of  obtaining  an  honorable 
maintenance,  increased  the  number  of  his  pupils. 

In  1641  he  conducted  his  defence  of  ecclesiastical  liberty,  in  a  series  of  attacks 
upon  episcopacy.  These  are  written  in  a  bitter  spirit  of  abusive  hostility,  for 
which  we  seek  an  insufficient  apology  in  his  exclusive  converse  with  a  party 
which  held  bishops  in  abhorrence,  and  in  the  low  personal  respectability  of  a  large 
portion  of  the  episcopal  bench. 

At  Whitsuntide,  in  the  year  1643,  having  reached  his  thirty-fifth  year,  he  mar- 
ried Mary  Powell,  a  young  lady  of  good  extraction  in  the  county  of  Oxford.  In 
1644  he  wrote  his  "  Areopagitica,  a  speech  for  the  liberty  of  unlicensed  printing." 
This  we  are  to  consider  in  the  light  of  an  oral  pleading,  or  regular  oration,  for  he 
tells  us  expressly  [Def.  2]  that  he  wrote  it  "  ad  justas  orationis  modum."  It  is  the 
finest  specimen  extant  of  generous  scorn.  And  very  remarkable  it  is,  that  Milton, 
who  broke  the  ground  on  this  great  theme,  has  exhausted  the  arguments  which 
bear  upon  it.  He  opened  the  subject :  he  closed  it.  And  were  there  no  other 
monument  of  his  patriotism  and  his  genius,  for  this  alone  he  would  deserve  to  be 
held  in  perpetual  veneration.  In  the  following  year,  1645,  was  published  the  first 
collection  of  his  early  poems  ;  with  his  sanction,  undoubtedly,  but  prol)ably  not 
upon  his  suggestion.  The  times  were  too  full  of  anxiety  to  allow  of  much  encour- 
agement to  polite  literature  ;  at  no  period  were  there  fewer  readers  of  poetry. 
And  for  himself  in  particular,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  sonnets,  it  is  probable 
that  he  composed  as  little  as  others  read,  for  the  next  ten  years  ;  so  great  were  his 
political  exertions. 

In  1649,  soon  after  King  Charles  was  put  to  death,  the  Council  of  State  re- 
solved to  use  the  Latin  tongue  in  their  international  concerns,  instead  of  French. 
The  office  of  Latin  Secretary,  therefore,  was  created,  and  bestowed  upon  Milton. 
His  hours  from  henceforth  must  have  been  pretty  well  occupied  by  official  labors. 
He  was  one  of  the  most  prominent  men  in  his  party,  a  close  friend  to  Cromwell, 
who  frequently  visited  him  ;  and  his  advice  was  sought  on  all  questions  of  impor- 
tance. Yet  at  this  time  he  undertook  a  service  to  the  state,  more  invidious,  and 
perhaps  more  perilous,  than  any  in  which  his  politics  ever  involved  him.  On  the 
very  day  of  the  king's  execution,  and  even  below  the  scaffold,  had  been  sold  the 
earliest  copies  of  a  work  admirably  fitted  to  shake  the  new  government,  and  for  the 
sensation  which  it  produced  at  the  time,  and  the  lasting  controversy  which  it  has 
engendered,  one  of  the  most  remarkable  known  in  literary  history.  This  was  the 
"  Eikon  Basilike,  or  Royal  Image,"  professing  to  be  a  series  of  meditations  drawn 
up  by  the  late  king,  on  the  leading  events  from  the  very  beginning  of  the  national 
troubles.  Appearing  at  this  critical  moment,  and  co-operating  with  the  strong  re- 
action of  the  public  mind,  already  effected  in  the  king's  favor  bv  his  violent  death, 
this  book  produced  an  impression  absolutely  unparalleled  in  an}^  age.  Fifty  thou- 
sand copies,  it  is  asserted,  were  sold  within  one  year  ;  and  a  posthumous  power  was 


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JOHN    MILTON  63 

thus  given  to  the  king's  name  by  one  little  book,  which  exceeded,  in  alarm  to  his 
enemies,  all  that  his  armies  could  accomplish  in  his  lifetime.  No  remedy  could 
meet  the  evil  in  degree.  As  the  only  one  that  seemed  fitted  to  it  in  kind,  Milton 
drew  up  a  running  commentary  upon  each  separate  head  of  the  original  ;  and  as 
that  had  been  entitled  the  king's  image,  he  gave  to  his  own  the  title  of  "  Eikono- 
clastes,  or  Image-breaker,"  "  the  famous  surname  of  many  Greek  emperors,  who 
broke  all  superstitious  images  in  pieces."  . 

This  work  was  drawn  up  with  the  usual  polemic  ability  of  Milton  ;  but  by  its 
very  plan  and  purpose  it  threw  upon  him  difficulties  which  no  ability  could  meet. 
It  had  that  inevitable  disadvantage  which  belongs  to  all  ministerial  and  secondary 
works  :  the  order  and  choice  of  topics  being  all  determined  by  the  "  Eikon,"  Mil- 
ton, for  the  first  time,  wore  an  air  of  constraint  and  servility,  following  a  leader 
and  obeying  his  motions,  as  an  engraver  is  controlled  by  the  designer,  or  a  trans- 
lator by  the  original.  It  is  plain,  from  the  pains  he  took  to  exonerate  himself 
from  such  a  reproach,  that  he  feit  his  task  to  be  an  invidious  one.  The  majesty 
of  grief,  expressing  itself  with  Christian  meekness,  and  appealing  as  it  were,  from 
the  grave  to  the  consciences  of  men,  could  not  be  violated  without  a  recoil  of 
angr}^  feeling,  ruinous  to  the  effect  of  any  logic  or  rhetoric  the  most  persuasive. 
The  affliction  of  a  great  prince,  his  solitude,  his  rigorous  imprisonment,  his  con- 
stancy to  some  purposes  which  were  not  selfish,  his  dignity  of  demeanor  in  the 
midst  of  his  heavy  trials,  and  his  truly  Christian  fortitude  in  his  final  sufferings — 
these  formed  a  rhetoric  which  made  its  wa}^  to  all  hearts.  Against  such  influ- 
ences the  eloquence  of  Greece  would  have  been  vain.  The  nation  was  spell- 
bound ;  and  a  majority  of  its  population  neither  could  nor  would  be  disenchanted. 

Milton  was  ere  long  called  to  plead  the  same  great  cause  of  liberty  upon  an 
ampler  stage,  and  before  a  more  equitable  audience  ;  to  plead  not  on  behalf  of 
his  party  against  the  Presbyterians  and  Royalists,  but  on  behalf  of  his  country 
against  the  insults  of  a  hired  Frenchman,  and  at  the  bar  of  the  whole  Christian 
world.  Charles  II.  had  resolved  to  state  his  father's  case  to  all  Europe.  This 
was  natural,  for  very  few  people  on  the  continent  knew  what  cause  had  brought 
his  father  to  the  block,  or  why  he  himself  was  a  vagrant  exile  from  his  throne, 
ror  his  advocate  he  selected  Claudius  Salmasius,  and  that  was  most  injudicious. 
Salmasius  betra\-ed  in  his  work  entire  ignorance  of  everything,  whether  histori- 
cal or  constitutional,  which  belonged  to  the  case. 

Having  such  an  antagonist,  inferior  to  him  in  all  possible  qualifications, 
whether  of  nature,  of  art,  of  situation,  it  may  be  supposed  that  Milton's  triumph 
was  absolute.  He  was  now  thoroughly  indemnified  for  the  poor  success  of  his 
"  Eikonoclastes."  In  that  instance  he  had  the  mortification  of  knowing  that  all 
England  read  and  we])t  over  the  king's  book,  while  his  own  reply  was  scarcely 
heard  of.  But  here  the  tables  were  turned  ;  the  very  friends  of  Salmasius  com- 
plained that  while  his  defence  was  rarely  inquired  after,  the  answer  to  it,  "  Dc- 
fensio  pro  Populo  Anglicano,"  was  the  subject  of  conversation  from  one  end  of 
Europe  to  the  other.  It  was  burned  publicly  at  Paris  and  Toulouse  ;  and,  byway  of 
special  annoyance  to  Salmasius,  who  lived  in  Holland,  was  translated  into  Dutch. 


64  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

In  165 1  Milton's  first  wife  died,  after  she  had  given  him  three  daughters. 
In  that  year  he  had  already  lost  the  use  of  one  eye,  and  was  warned  by  the  phy- 
sicians that  if  he  persisted  in  his  task  of  replying  to  Salmasius  he  would  prob- 
ably lose  the  other.  The  warning  was  soon  accomplished,  according  to  the  com- 
mon account,  in  1654;  but  upon  collating  his  letter  to  Phalaris  the  Athenian, 
with  his  own  pathetic  statement  in  the  "  Defensio  Secunda,"  we  are  disposed  to 
date  it  from  1652.  In  1655  he  resigned  his  office  of  secretary,  in  which  he  had 
latterly  been  obliged  to  use  an  assistant. 

Some  time  before  this  period  he  had  married  his  second  wife,  Catherine 
Woodcock,  to  whom  it  is  supposed  that  he  was  very  tenderly  attached.  In  1657 
she  died  in  child-birth,  together  with  her  child,  an  event  which  he  has  recorded 
in  a  very  beautiful  sonnet.  This  loss,  added  to  his  blindness,  must  have  made 
his  home,  for  some  years,  desolate  and  comfortless.  Distress,  indeed,  was  now 
gathering  rapidly  upon  him.  The  death  of  Cromwell,  in  the  following  j'ear,  and 
the  imbecile  character  of  his  eldest  son,  held  out  an  invitation  to  the  aspiring  in- 
triguers of  the  day,  which  they  were  not  slow  to  improve.  It  soon  became  too 
evident  to  Milton's  discernment  that  all  things  were  hurrying  forward  to  restora- 
tion of  the  ejected  family.  Sensible  of  the  risk,  therefore,  and  without  much 
hope,  but  obeying  the  summons  of  his  conscience,  he  wrote  a  short  tract  on  the 
ready  and  easy  way  to  establish  a  free  commonwealth,  concluding  with  these 
noble  words  :  "Thus  much  I  should  perhaps  have  said,  though  I  were  sure  I 
should  have  spoken  only  to  trees  and  stones,  and  had  none  to  cry  to,  but  with 
the  Prophet,  Oh  earth  !  earth  !  earth  !  to  tell  the  very  soil  itself  what  her  per- 
verse inhabitants  are  deaf  to.  Nay,  though  what  I  have  spoken  should  happen 
[which  Thou  suffer  not,  who  didst  create  free,  nor  Thou  next  who  didst  redeem 
us  from  being  servants  of  men]  to  be  the  last  words  of  our  expiring  liberty." 

What  he  feared  was  soon  realized.  In  the  spring  of  1660  the  Restoration 
was  accomplished  amid  the  tumultuous  rejoicings  of  the  people.  It  was  certain 
that  the  vengeance  of  government  would  lose  no  time  in  marking  its  victims  ; 
and  some  of  them  in  anticipation  had  already  fled.  Milton  wisely  withdrew  from 
the  first  fury  of  the  persecution  which  now  descended  on  his  party.  He  secreted 
himself  in  London,  and  when  he  returned  to  the  public  eye  in  the  winter, 
found  himself  no  farther  punished  than  by  a  general  disqualification  for  the  pub- 
lic service,  and  the  disgrace  of  a  public  burning  inflicted  on  his  "  Eikonoclastes," 
and  his  "  Defensio  pro  Populo  Anglicano." 

Apparently  it  was  not  long  after  this  time  that  he  married  his  third  wife, 
Elizabeth  Minshul,  a  lady  of  good  family  in  Cheshire.  In  what  year  he  began 
the  composition  of  his  "  Paradise  Lost  "  is  not  certainly  known  ;  some  have 
supposed  in  1658.  There  is  better  ground  for  fixing  the  period  of  its  close. 
During  the  plague  of  1665  he  retired  to  Chalfont,  and  at  that  time  Elwood,  the 
Quaker,  read  the  poem  in  a  finished  state.  The  general  interruption  of  business 
in  London,  occasioned  by  the  plague,  and  prolonged  by  the  great  fire  in  1666, 
explain  why  the  publication  was  delayed  for  nearly  two  years.  The  contract 
with  the  publisher  is  dated  April  26,  1667,  and  in  the  course  of  that  year  the 


JOHN   MILTON  65 

"  Paradise  Lost  "  was  published.  Originally  it  was  printed  in  ten  books  ;  in  the 
second  and  subsequent  editions,  the  seventh  and  tenth  books  were  each  divided 
into  two.  Milton  received  only  ^5  in  the  first  instance  on  the  publication  of  the 
book.  His  farther  profits  were  regulated  by  the  sale  of  the  first  three  editions. 
Each  was  to  consist  of  fifteen  hundred  copies,  and  on  the  second  and  third,  re- 
spectively, reaching  a  sale  of  thirteen  hundred,  he  was  to  receive  a  farther  sum 
of  ^5  for  each,  making  a  total  of  ^^15.  The  receipt  for  the  second  sum  of  ^5  is 
dated  April  26,  1669. 

In  1670  Milton  published  his  "  History  of  Britain,"  from  the  fabulous  period 
of  the  Norman  Conquest.  And  in  the  same  year  he  published  in  one  volume 
"  Paradise  Regained  "  and  "  Samson  Agonistes."  It  has  been  currently  asserted 
that  Milton  preferred  the  "  Paradise  Regained  "  to  "  Paradise  Lost."  This  is  not 
true  ;  but  he  may  have  been  justly  offended  by  the  false  principles  on  which 
some  of  his  friends  maintained  a  reasonable  opinion.  The  "  Paradise  Regained  " 
is  inferior  by  the  necessity  of  its  subject  and  design.  In  the  "  Paradise  Lost  " 
Milton  had  a  field  properly  adapted  to  a  poet's  purposes  ;  a  few  hints  in  Script- 
ure were  expanded.  Nothing  was  altered,  nothing  absolutely  added  ;  but  that 
which  was  told  in  the  Scriptures  in  sum,  or  in  its  last  results,  was  developed  into 
its  whole  succession  of  parts.  Thus,  for  instance,  "  There  was  war  in  heaven," 
furnished  the  matter  for  a  whole  book.  Now  for  the  latter  poem,  which  part  of 
our  Saviour's  life  was  it  best  to  select  as  that  in  which  paradise  was  regained  ? 
He  might  have  taken  the  crucifixion,  and  here  he  had  a  much  wider  field  than 
in  the  temptation  ;  but  then  he  was  subject  to  this  dilemma  :  if  he  modified,  or 
in  any  way  altered,  the  full  details  of  the  four  evangelists,  he  shocked  the  relig- 
ious sense  of  all  Christians  ;  yet,  the  purposes  of  a  poet  would  often  require  that 
he  should  so  modify  them.  With  a  fine  sense  of  this  difficulty,  he  chose  the  nar- 
row basis  of  the  temptation  in.  the  wilderness,  because  there  the  whole  had  been 
wrapped  up  in  the  Scriptures  in  a  few  brief  abstractions.  Thus  "  he  showed  him 
all  the  kingdoms  of  the  earth,"  is  expanded,  without  offence  to  the  nicest  relig- 
ious scruple,  into  that  matchless  succession  of  pictures,  which  bring  before  us  the 
learned  glories  of  Athens,  Rome  in  her  civil  grandeur,  and  the  barbaric  splendor 
of  Parthia.  The  actors  being  only  two,  the  action  of  "  Paradise  Regained  "  is 
unavoidably  limited.  But  in  respect  of  composition,  it  is,  perhaps,  more  elabo- 
rately finished  than  "  Paradise  Lost." 

His  subsequent  works  are  not  important  enough  to  merit  a  separate  notice. 
His  end  was  now  approaching.  In  the  summer  of  1674  he  was  still  cheerful, 
and  in  the  possession  of  his  intellectual  faculties.  But  the  vigor  of  his  bodily 
constitution  had  been  silently  giving  way,  through  a  long  course  of  years,  to  the 
ravages  of  gout.  It  was  at  length  thoroughly  undermined  ;  and  about  Novem- 
ber 10,  1674,  he  died  with  tranquillity  so  profound  that  his  attendants  were  un- 
able to  determine  the  exact  moment  of  his  decease.  He  was  buried,  with  unusual 
marks  of  honor,  in  the  chancel  of  St.  Giles  at  Cripplegate. 


66 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


JOHN    BUNYAN 

Bv  John  Greenleaf  Whittier 

(i 628-1 688^ 

"  AVouldst  see 
A  man  i'  the  clouds,  and  hear  him  speak  to  thee  ?  " 


w 


7  HO   has  not  read  "  Pilgrim's  Prog- 


w 


rcss?"  Who  has  not,  in  child- 
hood, followed  the  wandering  Christian 
on  his  way  to  the  Celestial  City  ?  Who 
has  not  laid  at  night  his  young  head  on 
the  pillow,  to  paint  on  the  walls  of  dark- 
ness pictures  of  the  W^icket  Gate  and  the 
Archers,  the  Hill  of  Difficulty,  the  Lions 
and  Giants,  Doubting  Castle  and  Vanity 
Fair,  the  sunn}^  Delectable  Mountains 
and  the  Shepherds,  the  Black  River  and 
the  wonderful  glory  beyond  it  ;  and  at 
last  fallen  asleep,  to  dream  over  the 
strange  story,  to  hear  the  sweet  welcom- 
ings  of  the  sisters  at  the  House  Beauti- 
ful, and  the  song  of  birds  from  the  win- 
dow of  that  "  upper  chamber  wiiich  opened 
-  -  __oi*-'^  toward  the  sunrising  ?"     And  who,  look- 

ing back  to  the  green  spots  in  his  childish  experiences,  does  not  bless  the  good 
Tinker  of  Elstow  ? 

And  who,  that  has  reperused  the  story  of  the  Pilgrim  at  a  maturer  age,  and 
felt  the  plummet  of  its  truth  sounding  in  the  deep  places  of  the  soul,  has  not 
reason  to  bless  the  author  for  some  timely  warning  or  grateful  encouragement  ? 
Where  is  the  scholar,  the  poet,  the  man  of  taste  and  feeling  who  does  not  with 

Cowper, 

"  Even  in  transitory  Hfe's  late  day, 
Revere  the  man  whose  Pilgrim  marks  the  road 
And  guides  the  Progress  of  the  soul  to  God  !  " 

We  have  just  been  reading,  with  no  slight  degree  of  interest,  that  simple  but 
wonderful  piece  of  autobiography  entitled  "  Grace  Abounding  to  the  Chief  of 
Sinners,"  from  the  pen  of  the  author  of  "  Pilgrim's  Progress."  It  is  the  record 
of  a  journey  more  terrible  than  that  of  the  ideal  Pilgrim  ;  "truth  stranger  than 
fiction  ;"  the  painful  upward  struggling  of  a  spirit  from  the  blackness  of  despair 
and  blasphemy,  into  the  high,  pure  air  of  Hope  and  Faith.     More  earnest  words 


JOHN   BUNYAN  67 

were  never  written.  It  is  the  entire  unveiling  of  a  liuman  heart,  the  tearing  off 
of  the  fig-leaf  covering  of  its  sin.  The  voice  which  speaks  to  us  from  these  old 
pages  seems  not  so  much  that  of  a  denizen  of  the  world  in  which  we  live,  as  of  a 
soul  at  the  last  solemn  confessional.  Shorn  of  all  ornament,  simple  and  direct 
as  the  contrition  and  prayer  of  childhood,  when  for  the  first  time  the  Spectre  of 
Sin  stands  by  its  bedside,  the  style  is  that  of  a  man  dead  to  self-gratification, 
careless  of  the  world's  opinion,  and  only  desirous  to  convey  to  others,  in  all  truth- 
fulness and  sincerity,  the  lesson  of  his  inward  trials,  temptations,  sins,  weaknesses, 
and  dangers  ;  and  to  give  glory  to  Him  who  had  mercifully  led  him  through  all, 
and  enabled  him,  like  his  own  Pilgrim,  to  leave  behind  the  Valley  of  the  Shadow 
of  Death,  the  snares  of  the  Enchanted  Ground,  and  the  terrors  of  Doubting  Cas- 
tle, and  to  reach  the  land  of  Beulah,  where  the  air  was  sweet  and  pleasant,  and 
the  birds  sang  and  the  flowers  sprang  up  around  him,  and  the  Shining  Ones 
walked  in  the  brightness  of  the  not  distant  heaven.  In  the  introductory  pages 
he  says :  "  I  could  have  dipped  into  a  style  higher  than  this  in  which  I  have  dis- 
coursed, and  could  have  adorned  all  things  more  than  here  I  have  seemed  to  do  ; 
but  I  dared  not.  God  did  not  play  in  tempting  me  ;  neither  did  I  pla}^  when  I 
sunk,  as  it  were,  into  a  bottomless  pit,  when  the  pangs  of  hell  took  hold  on  me  ; 
wherefore,  I  may  not  play  in  relating  of  them,  but  be  plain  and  simple,  and  lay 
down  the  thing  as  it  was." 

This  book,  as  well  as  "  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  was  written  in  Bedford  prison, 
and  was  designed  especially  for  the  comfort  and  edification  of  his  "  children,  whom 
God  had  counted  him  worthy  to  beget  in  faith  by  his  ministry."  In  his  introduc- 
tion he  tells  them,  that,  although  taken  from  them  and  tied  up,  "  sticking,  as  it 
were,  between  the  teeth  of  the  lions  of  the  wilderness,"  he  once  again,  as  before, 
from  the  top  of  Shemer  and  Hermon,  so  now,  from  the  lion's  den  and  the  moun- 
tain of  leopards,  would  look  after  them  with  fatherly  care  and  desires  for  their 
everlasting  welfare.  "If,"  said  he,  "you  have  sinned  against  light;  if  you  are 
tempted  to  blaspheme  ;  if  you  are  drowned  in  despair ;  if  you  think  God  fights 
against  you,  or  if  heaven  is  hidden  from  your  eyes,  remember  it  was  so  with  your 
father.      But  out  of  all  the  Lord  delivered  me." 

He  gives  no  dates ;  he  affords  scarcely  a  clew  to  his  localities  ;  of  the  man,  as 
he  worked  and  ate  and  drank  and  lodged,  of  his  neighbors  and  contemporaries, 
of  all  he  saw  and  heard  of  the  world  about  him,  we  have  only  an  occasional 
glimpse,  here  and  there,  in  his  narrative.  It  is  the  story  of  his  inward  life  only 
that  he  relates.  What  had  time  and  place  to  do  with  one  who  trembled  always 
with  the  awful  consciousness  of  an  immortal  nature,  and  about  whom  fell  alter 
nately  the  shadows  of  hell  and  the  splendors  of  heaven  ?  We  gather,  indeed 
from  his  record  that  he  was  not  an  idle  on-looker  in  the  time  of  England's  great 
struggle  for  freedom,  but  a  soldier  of  the  Parliament  in  his  young  years,  among 
the  praying  swordcrs  and  psalm-singing  pikemen,  the  Greathearts  and  Holdfasts 
whom  he  has  immortalized  in  his  allegory  ;  but  the  only  allusion  which  he  makes 
to  this  [)ortion  of  his  experience  is  by  way  of  illustration  of  the  goodness  of  God 
in  preserving  him  on  occasions  of  peril. 


68  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

He  was  born  at  Elstow,  in  Bedfordshire,  in  162S  ;  and,  to  use  his  own  words, 
his  "  father's  house  was  of  that  rank  which  is  the  meanest  and  most  despised  of 
all  the  families  of  the  land."  His  father  was  a  tinker,  and  the  son  followed  the 
same  calling,  which  necessarily  brought  him  into  association  with  the  lowest  and 
most  depraved  classes  of  English  society.  The  estimation  in  which  the  tinker 
and  his  occupation  were  held  in  the  seventeenth  century,  may  be  learned  from 
the  quaint  and  humorous  description  of  Sir  Thomas  Overbury.  "  The  tinker," 
saith  he,  "is  a  movable,  for  he  hath  no  abiding  in  one  place  ;  he  seems  to  be  de- 
vout, for  his  life  is  a  continual  pilgrimage,  and  sometimes,  in  humility,  goes  bare- 
foot, therein  making  necessity  a  virtue  ;  he  is  a  gallant,  for  he  carries  all  his 
wealth  upon  his  back  ;  or  a  philosopher,  for  he  bears  all  his  substance  with  him. 
He  is  always  furnished  with  a  song,  to  which  his  hammer,  keeping  tune,  proves 
that  he  was  the  first  founder  of  the  kettle-drum  ;  where  the  best  ale  is,  there 
stands  his  music  most  upon  crotchets.  The  companion  of  his  travel  is  some  foul, 
sunburnt  quean,  that,  since  the  terrible  statute,  has  recanted  gypsyism,  and  is 
turned  pedlaress.  So  marches  he  all  over  England,  with  his  bag  and  baggage ; 
his  conversation  is  irreprovable,  for  he  is  always  mending.  He  observes  truly  the 
statutes,  and  therefore  had  rather  steal  than  beg.  He  is  so  strong  an  enemy  of 
idleness,  that  in  mending  one  hole  he  would  rather  make  three  than  want  work  ; 
and  when  he  hath  done,  he  throws  the  wallet  of  his  faults  behind  him.  His  tongue 
is  very  voluble,  which,  with  canting,  proves  him  a  linguist.  He  is  entertained  in 
every  place,  yet  enters  no  farther  than  the  door,  to  avoid  suspicion.  To  conclude, 
if  he  escape  Tyburn  and  Banbury,  he  dies  a  beggar." 

Truly,  but  a  poor  beginning  for  a  pious  life  was  the  youth  of  John  Bunyan. 
As  might  have  been  expected,  he  was  a  wild,  reckless,  swearing  boy,  as  his  father 
doubtless  was  before  him.  "  It  was  my  delight,"  says  he,  "  to  be  taken  captive 
by  the  devil.  I  had  few  equals,  both  for  cursing  and  swearing,  lying  and  blasphem- 
ing." Yet,  in  his  ignorance  and  darkness,  his  powerful'  imagination  early  lent 
terror  to  the  reproaches  of  conscience.  He  was  scared,  even  in  childhood,  with 
dreams  of  hell  and  apparitions  of  devils.  Troubled  with  fears  of  eternal  fire  and 
the  malignant  demons  who  fed  it  in  the  regions  of  despair,  he  says  that  he  often 
wished  either  that  there  was  no  hell,  or  that  he  had  been  born  a  devil  himself, 
that  he  might  be  a  tormentor  rather  than  one  of  the  tormented. 

At  an  early  age  he  appears  to  have  married.  His  wife  was  as  poor  as  him- 
self, for  he  tells  us  that  they  had  not  so  much  as  a  dish  or  spoon  between  them  ; 
but  she  brought  with  her  two  books  on  religious  subjects,  the  reading  of  which 
seems  to  have  had  no  slight  degree  of  influence  on  his  mind.  He  went  to  church 
regularly,  adored  the  priest  and  all  things  pertaining  to  his  office,  being,  as  he 
says,  "  overrun  with  superstition."  On  one  occasion  a  sermon  was  preached 
against  the  breach  of  the  Sabbath  by  sports  or  labor,  which  struck  him  at  the  mo- 
ment as  especially  designed  for  himself  ;  but  by  the  time  he  had  finished  his  din- 
ner he  was  prepared  to  "  shake  it  out  of  his  mind,  and  return  to  his  sports  and 
gaming." 

One  day,  while  standing  in  the  street,  cursing  and  blaspheming,  he  met  with 


JOHN    BUNYAN  69 

a  reproof  which  startled  him.  The  woman  of  the  house  in  front  of  which  the 
wicked  young  tinker  was  standing,  herself,  as  he  remarks,  "  a  very  loose,  ungodly 
wretch,"  protested  that  his  horrible  profanity  made  her  tremble  ;  that  he  was  the 
ungodliest  fellow  for  swearing  she  had  ever  heard,  and  able  to  spoil  all  the  youth 
of  the  town  who  came  in  his  company.  Struck  by  this  wholly  unexpected  re- 
buke, he  at  once  abandoned  the  practice  of  swearing ;  although  previously  he 
tells  us  that  "  he  had  never  known  how  to  speak,  unless  he  put  an  oath  before 
and  another  behind." 

His  account  of  his  entering  upon  the  solemn  duties  of  a  preacher  of  the  gos- 
pel is  at  once  curious  and  instructive.  He  deals  honestly  with  himself,  exposing 
all  his  various  moods,  weaknesses,  doubts,  and  temptations.  "  I  preached,"  he 
says,  "  what  I  felt ;  for  the  terrors  of  the  law  and  the  guilt  of  transgression  lay 
heavy  on  my  conscience.  I  have  been  as  one  sent  to  them  from  the  dead.  I 
went,  myself  in  chains,  to  preach  to  them  in  chains,  and  carried  that  fire  in  my 
conscience  which  I  persuaded  them  to  beware  of."  At  times,  when  he  stood  up 
to  preach,  blasphemies  and  evil  doubts  rushed  into  his  mind,  and  he  felt  a  strong 
desire  to  utter  them  aloud  to  his  congregation  ;  and  at  other  seasons,  when  he 
was  about  to  apply  to  the  sinner  some  searching  and  fearful  text  of  scripture,  he 
was  tempted  ta  withhold  it,  on  the  ground  that  it  condemned  himself  also  ;  but, 
withstanding  the  suggestion  of  the  tempter,  to  use  his  own  simile,  he  bowed  him- 
self, like  Samson,  to  condemn  sin  wherever  he  found  it,  though  he  brought  guilt 
and  condemnation  upon  himself  thereby,  choosing  rather  to  die  with  the  Philis- 
tines than  to  deny  the  truth. 

Foreseeing  the  consequences  of  exposing  himself  to  the  operation  of  the 
penal  laws  by  holding  conventicles  and  preaching,  he  was  deeply  afflicted  at  the 
thought  of  the  suffering  and  destitution  to  which  his  wife  and  children  might  be 
exposed  by  his  death  or  imprisonment.  Nothing  can  be  more  touching  than  his 
simple  and  earnest  words  on  this  point.  They  show  how  warm  and  deep  were 
his  human  affections,  and  what  a  tender  and  loving  heart  he  laid  as  a  sacrifice  on 
the  altar  of  duty. 

"  I  found  myself  a  man  compassed  with  infirmities;  the  parting  with  my  wife 
and  poor  children  hath  often  been  to  me  in  this  place  as  the  pulling  the  flesh 
from  the  bones;  and  also  it  brought  to  my  mind  the  many  hardships,  miseries. 
and  wants,  that  my  poor  family  was  like  to  meet  with,  should  I  be  taken  from 
them,  especially  my  poor  blind  child,  who  lay  nearer  my  heart  than  all  beside. 
Oh,  the  thoughts  of  the  hardshii)s  I  thought  my  poor  blind  one  might  go  under 
would  break  my  heart  to  pieces.  Poor  child!  thought  I,  what  sorrow  art  thou 
like  to  have  for  thy  portion  in  this  world  !  thou  must  be  beaten,  must  beg,  sulTer 
hunger,  cold,  nakedness,  and  a  thousand  calamities,  though  I  cannot  now  endure 
the  wind  should  blow  upon  thee.  But  yet,  thought  I,  I  must  venture  you  all 
with  God,  though  it  goeth  to  the  quick  to  leave  you.  Oh  !  I  saw  I  was  as  a  man 
who  was  pulling  down  his  house  upon  the  heads  of  his  wife  and  children  ;  yet  I 
thought  on  those  '  two  milch  kine  that  were  to  carry  the  ark  of  God  into  an- 
other country,  and  to  leave  their  calves  behind  them.' 


70  ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 

"  But  that  which  helped  me  in  this  temptation  was  divers  considerations  :  the 
first  was,  the  consideration  of  those  two  Scriptures,  '  Leave  thy  fatherless  chil- 
dren, I  will  preserve  them  alive  ;  and  let  thy  widows  trust  in  me  ; '  and  again, 
'  The  Lord  said,  Verily  it  shall  go  well  with  thy  remnant  ;  verily  I  will  cause  the 
enemy  to  entreat  them  well  in  the  time  of  evil.'  " 

He  was  arrested  in  1660,  charged  with  "devilishly  and  perniciously  abstaining 
from  church,"  and  of  being  "a  common  upholder  of  conventicles."  At  the 
Quarter  Sessions,  where  his  trial  seems  to  have  been  conducted  somewhat  like  that 
of  Faithful  at  Vanity  Fair,  he  was  sentenced  to  perpetual  banishment.  This 
sentence,  however,  was  never  executed,  but  he  was  remanded  to  Bedford  jail, 
where  he  lay  a  prisoner  for  twelve  years. 

Here,  shut  out  from  the  world,  with  no  other  books  than  the  Bible  and  Fox's 
"  Martyrs,"  he  penned  that  great  work  which  has  attained  a  wider  and  more  stable 
popularity  than  any  other  book  in  the  English  tongue.  It  is  alike  the  favorite  of 
the  nursery  and  the  study.  Many  experienced  Christians  hold  it  only  second  to 
the  Bible  ;  the  infidel  himself  would  not  willingly  let  it  die.  Men  of  all  sects 
read  it  with  delight,  as  in  the  main  a  truthful  representation  of  the  Christian  pil- 
grimage, without  indeed  assenting  to  all  the  doctrines  which  the  author  puts  in 
the  mouth  of  his  fighting  sermonizer,  Greatheart,  or  which  may  be  deduced  from 
some  other  portions  of  his  allegory.  A  recollection  of  his  fearful  sufferings,  from 
misapprehension  of  a  single  text. in  the  Scriptures,  relative  to  the  question  of 
election,  we  may  suppose  gave  a  milder  tone  to  the  theology  of  his  Pilgrim  than 
was  altogether  consistent  with  the  Calvinism  of  the  seventeenth  century.  "  Re- 
ligion," says  Macaulay,  "  has  scarcely  ever  worn  a  form  so  calm  and  soothing  as 
in  Bunyan's  allegor}^"  In  composing  it,  he  seems  never  to  have  altogether  lost 
sight  of  the  fact,  that,  in  his  life-and-death  struggle  with  Satan  for  the  blessed 
promise  recorded  by  the  Apostle  of  Love,  the  adversary  was  generally  found  on 
the  Genevan  side  of  the  argument. 

Little  did  the  short-sighted  persecutors  of  Bunyan  dream,  when  they  closed 
upon  him  the  door  of  Bedford  jail,  that  God  would  overrule  their  poor  spite  and 
envy  to  His  own  glory  and  the  world-wide  renown  of  their  victim.  In  the  soli- 
tude of  his  prison,  the  ideal  forms  of  beauty  and  sublimity  which  had  long  flitted 
before  him  vaguely,  like  the  vision  of  the  Temanite,  took  shape  and  coloring ; 
and  he  was  endowed  with  power  to  reduce  them  to  order,  and  arrange  them  in 
harmonious  groupings.  His  powerful  imagination,  no  longer  self-tormenting, 
but  under  the  direction  of  reason  and  grace,  expanded  his  narrow  cell  into  a  vast 
theatre,  lighted  up  for  the  display  of  its  wonders. 

Few  who  read  Bunyan  nowadays  think  of  him  as  one  of  the  brave  old  Eng- 
lish confessors,  whose  steady  and  firm  endurance  of  persecution  baffled,  and  in 
the  end  overcame,  the  tyranny  of  the  Established  Church  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
II.  What  Milton  and  Penn  and  Locke  wrote  in  defence  of  libert)^,  Bunyan 
lived  out  and  acted.  He  made  no  concessions  to  worldly  rank.  Dissolute  lords 
and  proud  bishops  he  counted  less  than  the  humblest  and  poorest  of  his  disciples 
at  Bedford.     When  first  arrested  and  thrown  into  prison,  he  supposed  he  should 


JOHN    BUNYAN  71 

be  called  to  suffer  death  for  his  faitliful  testimony  to  the  truth  ;  and  his  great 
fear  was,  that  he  should  not  meet  his  fate  with  the  requisite  firmness,  and  so  dis- 
honor the  cause  of  his  Master.  And  when  dark  clouds  came  over  him,  and  he 
souffht  in  vain  for  a  sufficient  evidence  that  in  the  event  of  his  death  it  would  be 
well  with  him,  he  girded  up  his  soul  with  the  reflection  that,  as  he  suffered  for 
the  word  and  way  of  God,  he  was  engaged  not  to  shrink  one  hair's  breadth  from 
it.  "  I  will  leap,"  he  says,  "  off  the  ladder  blindfold  into  eternity,  sink  or 
swim,  come  heaven,  come  hell.  Lord  Jesus,  if  thou  wilt  catch  me,  do  ;  if  not,  I 
will  venture  in  thy  name  !" 

The  English  revolution  of  the  seventeenth  century,  while  it  humbled  the  false 
and  oppressive  aristocracy  of  rank  and  title,  was  prodigal  in  the  development  of 
the  real  nobility  of  the  mind  and  heart.  Its  history  is  bright  with  the  footprints 
of  men  whose  very  names  still  stir  the  hearts  of  freemen,  the  world  over,  like  a 
trumpet  peal.  Say  what  we  may  of  its  fanaticism,  laugh  as  we  may  at  its  extrav^- 
agant  enjoyment  of  newly-acquired  religious  and  civil  liberty,  who  shall  now  vent- 
ure to  deny  that  it  was  the  golden  age  of  England  ?  Who  that  regards  freedom 
above  slavery,  will  now  sympathize  with  the  outcry  and  lamentation  of  those 
interested  in  the  continuance  of  the  old  order  of  things,  against  the  prevalence 
of  sects  and  schism,  but  who  at  the  same  time,  as  Milton  shrewdly  intimates, 
dreaded  more  the  rending  of  their  pontifical  sleeves  than  the  rending  of  the 
Church  ?  Who  shall  now  sneer  at  Puritanism,  with  the  "  Defence  of  Unlicensed 
Printing"  before  him  ?  Who  scoff  at  Quakerism  over  the  "Journal  "  of  George 
Fox  ?  Who  shall  join  with  debauched  lordlings  and  fat-witted  prelates  in  ridicule 
of  Anabaptist  levellers  and  dippers,  after  rising  from  the  perusal  of  "  Pilgrim's 
Progress?"  "There  were  giants  in  those  days."  And  foremost  amid  that  band 
of  liberty-loving  and  God-fearing  men, 

"  The  slandered  Calvinists  of  Charles's  time. 
Who  fought,  and  won  it,  Freedom's  holy  fight," 

Stands  the  subject  of  our  sketch,  the  "  Tinker  of  Elstow."  Of  his  high  merit  as 
an  author  there  is  no  longer  any  question.  The  EdinburgJi  Rcvieiv  expressed 
the  common  sentiment  of  the  literary  world,  when  it  declared  that  the  two  great 
creative  minds  of  the  seventeenth  century  were  those  which  produced  "Paradise 
Lost  "  and  the  "  Pilgrim's  Progress." 


72 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


DANIEL  DEFOE* 

By  Clark  Russell 
(1661-1731) 


D 


^ANiEL  Defoe,  whose  "  Robinson  Crusoe  " 
remains,  at  the  end  of  two  centuries,  the 
most  popular  work  of  fiction  in  a  literature 
abounding  in  imaginative  works  of  superlative 
excellence,  was  born  in  London  in  1661.  His 
father  was  plain  Mr.  Foe,  a  butcher,  of  St.  Giles, 
Cripplegate.  Though  Defoe  speaks  gratefully 
and  respectfully  of  his  father,  he  implies  here 
and  there  in  his  writings  a  pride  of  birth  which 
probably  did  not  induce  him  to  talk  freely  of  the 
parental  calling.  He  must  needs  be  of  Norman 
extraction,  and  go  back  with  the  best'  of  those 
whose  family  claims  he  sneers  at ;  and  that  pos- 
terity might  be  in  no  doubt  of  the  antiquity  of 
his  descent,  he,  at  the  age  of  about  forty,  changed  the  plain  sturdy  name  of  Foe 
into  De  Foe  ;  but  the  accepted  name  is  as  it  is  spelt  in  this  contribution. 

His  father  wished  to  make  a  Dissenting  teacher  of  him,  and  sent  him  to  Mor- 
ton's Academy,  in  Newington  Green.  Morton  thoroughly  grounded  him  in 
knowledge  of  a  practical  and  useful  sort  ;  and  Defoe  claimed  for  his  preceptor's 
system  of  education  that  the  pupils  became  masters  of  the  English  tongue.  But 
language  is  a  genius.  No  teacher  could  make  a  writer  of  a  boy  who  was  without 
the  talent  of  words.  In  after  years  Defoe  appears  to  have  picked  up  several 
tongues,  as  may  be  judged  by  his  challenge  to  John  Tutchin,  to  translate  with 
him  any  Latin,  French,  or  Italian  author  for  twenty  pounds  each  book  ;  one  sees 
his  proficiency  also  in  the  character  he  gives  of  himself  in  a  paper  m  Applebees 
Journal.  But  at  the  very  heart  of  the  genius  of  Defoe  lay  the  spirit  of  the 
tradesman.  It  burns  like  a  farthing  rushlight  in  the  midst  of  a  richly  furnished 
room.  Whoever  wants  to  understand  Defoe  must  study  his  mind  by  this  light. 
He  declined  to  fill  a  pulpit  because,  in  the  language  of  the  shop,  "it  did  not 
pay."  Already,  that  is  when  he  was  about  two-and-twenty  years  old,  he  was  writ- 
ing pamphlets  on  Protestantism,  on  Popular  Liberties,  and  the  like,  and  he  also 
appears  to  have  taken  part  in  the  Duke  of  Monmouth's  rising. 

In  1685  he  opened  a  shop  as  a  hosier  in  Freeman's  Court,  Cornhill.  There 
is  nothing  memorable  to  record  of  him  while  he  was  in  this  line  of  trade,  saving 
that  in  1688,  at  the  Revolution,  he  made  haste  to  accentuate  his  adhesion  to 
William  III.  by  joining  a  company  of  volunteer  horse,  a  royal  regiment  made 
up  of  the  principal  citizens  of  London  ;  these  men,  gallantly  mounted  and  richly 

•  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


DANIEL   DEFOE  73 

accoutred,  with  Defoe  in  their  midst  and  the  Earl  of  Monmouth  at  their  head, 
guarded  the  king  and  queen  to  a  banquet  at  Whitehall.      His  prosperity  as  a 
hosier  ended  in  1692,  in  which  year  he  fled  to   Bristol,  a  bankrupt,  with  debts, 
according  to  his  own  showing,  amounting  to  seventeen  thousand  pounds.      He 
did  not,  however,  long  lie  in  hiding.     In  recognition  of  his  services  as  a  pam- 
phleteer, the  post  of  accountant  to  the  Commissioners  of  the  Glass  Duty  was 
given  to  him.     We  then  find  him  prospering  again.      He  started  a  brick-making 
manufactory  at  Tilbury,  and  set  up  a  coach  and  a  pleasure-boat.      His  pen,  more- 
over, was  ceaselessly  employed  ;  the  titles  of  the  productions  of  a  single  month 
would  more  than  fill  the  slender  space  allotted  me.      He  fought  for  Non-con- 
formity till    1698,  then  broke  with  the   Dissenters  because  of  their  practice  of 
occasional   conformity,  which,  he   pretends,  disgusted  him.      His  argument  was, 
let  a  man  be  wholly  a  Dissenter,  or  wholly  a  Churchman.      But  don't  let  him  go 
to  chapel  one  Sunday  and  church  the  next.      He  can  never  be  taken  seriously, 
however,  in  these  short  flights  any  more  than  in  his  long  novels.     There  is  no 
consistency  in  his  writings,  because  there  is  no  conscience  in  his  opinions.      In 
his  "The  Shortest  W^ay  with  the  Dissenters,"  he  faces  about,  and  the  man  who 
was  at  war  with  Howe,  the  most  eloquent  of  Non-conformist  divines,  second  only 
to  Jeremy  Taylor  in  richness  of  thought  and  splendor  of  diction,  is,  on  the  merits 
of  that  piece  of  irony,  accepted  by  posterity  as  the  foremost  champion  of  Dis- 
sent. 

Defoe's  loyalty  to  King  W^illiam,  however,  must  pass  unquestioned.  "  The 
True  Born  Englishman  "  procured  him  the  notice  of  the  king,  whose  confidence 
he  claims  to  have  been  honored  with.  His  real  character  as  a  journalist  and 
publicist  grows  quickly  visible  after  the  death  of  W^illiam  III.  His  genius  as  a 
"  trimmer"  makes  sheer  irony  of  his  most  appealing  and  eloquent  pieces.  Swift 
says  of  himself  that  he  wrote  that  reputation  might  stand  him  in  the  room  of  a 
title  and  coach  and  six  ;  Defoe  flourished  his  pen  as  a  tradesman,  for  money. 
Swift  claims  to  have  been  the  greatest  master  of  irony  of  his  day,  nay,  to  have 
invented  that  form  of  writing.  But  Defoe  surely  is  his  equal,  and  in  "The 
Shortest  W^ay"  out  and  away  his  superior.  The  writer's  gravity  completely  de- 
ceived the  world.  AV^hen  it  was  known  who  was  the  author,  the  Dissenters  were 
hardly  less  indignant  than  the  High  Churchmen.  The  satiric  recommendations 
were  indeed  in  the  highest  degree  alarming.  The  Tory  party  had  approved  with 
complacency  while  they  thought  the  piece  a  serious  proposal.  When  they  found 
out  Defoe  wrote  it,  they  hunted  him  down  and  forced  him  to  surrender  himself. 
A  hue-and-cry  advertisement  in  the  papers  while  he  was  a  fugitive,  survives  as  one 
of  the  best  pen-and-ink  sketches  in  the  language  :  "  He  is  a  middle-aged,  spare 
man,  about  forty  years  old,  of  a  brown  complexion  and  dark  brown  coloured  hair, 
but  wears  a  wig  :  a  hooked  nose,  a  sharp  chin,  gray  eyes,  and  a  large  mole  near 
his  mouth."  "The  Shortest  W^ay"  was  ordered  to  be  burnt,  and  Defoe  sentenced 
to  pay  a  fine  of  200  marks  to  Queen  Anne,  to  stand  three  times  in  the  pillory, 
to  be  imprisoned  during  the  queen's  pleasure,  and  to  find  sureties  for  his  good 
behavior  for  seven  years. 


74  ARTISTS  AND   AUTHORS 

The  genius  of  Eyre  Crowe  has  given  a  wonderful  life  and  color  to  this 
memorable  incident.  This  dead  thing  seems  charged  with  a  very  passion  of 
vitality  in  the  charming  illustration  that  accompanies  this  sketch.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  recur  to  the  degradation  of  one  of  Great  Britain's  finest  geniuses,  at  the 
instance  of  men  of  no  more  importance  to  posterity  than  the  worms  which  have 
eaten  them  up,  without  wrath  and  disgust.  But  he  was  popular,  and  the  crowd 
used  him  handsomely.  They  pelted  him  with  flowers  and  drank  his  health. 
Pope,  in  a  famous  line,  speaks  of  the  London  Monument  that,  like  a  tall  bully, 
lifts  its  head  and  lies,  because  of  the  inscription  upon  it  that  charged  the  Papists 
with  causing  the  great  fire.  The  malignant  little  hunchback,  as  malevolent  as  an 
ape  for  all  his  genius,  could  tell  lies  as  great  as  any  the  chisel  could  grave,  and 
unfortunately,  infinitely  more  lasting.  When  he  wrote  :  "  Earless  on  high  stands 
unabash'd  Defoe,"  he  knew  he  lied.  Defoe  did  not  lose  his  ears.  He  was  pil- 
loried simply,  and  for  three  days  successively,  stood  in  Cornhill,  in  Cheapside,  and 
at  Temple  Bar,  where  our  illustration  exhibits  him.  He  went  to  Newgate  ;  the 
government  dared  not  hinder  him  from  writing,  and  it  was  while  a  prisoner  that 
he  heroically  started  "The  Review,"  at  first  a  weekly,  and  afterward  a  bi-weekly, 
issue.  It  was  also  in  Newgate  that  he  learnt  much  of  those  secrets  of  the  prison- 
house  which,  translated  into  "Moll  Elanders"  and  "Colonel  Jack,"  are  tran- 
scripts so  exquisitely  faithful  that  one  knows  not  how  to  parallel  them  in  art  save 
by  the  paintings  of  Hogarth.  He  had  a  wife  and  si.x;  children  at  this  time,  and  it 
is  difficult  to  guess  how  he  provided  for  them.  His  works  at  Tilbury  were  a 
failure  :  it  may  be  supposed  that  his  pen  was  his  sole  resource. 

The  Earl  of  Nottingham  resigned  office  in  1704,  and  was  succeeded  by  Rob- 
ert Harley,  afterward  Earl  of  Oxford.  Harley,  who  had  a  high  sense  of  Defoe's 
genius,  sent  a  messenger  to  the  author  lying  in  jail  to  inquire  what  he  could  do  for 
him.  This  was  in  May,  yet  it  does  not  seem  that  he  was  released  until  August. 
The  government  forthwith  employed  him.  His  career  from  this  period,  whether 
as  a  journalist,  or  whether  as  a  government  hireling  employed  on  secret  services, 
is,  to  say  the  least,  dishonest.  In  short  he  was  a  needy  man,  willing  to  write  for 
anybody  and  say  anything  for  money.  In  1706  he  was  sent  as  a  spy  to  Scotland. 
Nothing  was  then  talked  about  but  the  union  of  the  two  kingdoms  ;  on  both 
sides  of  the  Tweed  the  masses  of  the  people  were  crazy  with  the  excitement  of 
the  subject.  Of  what  value  Defoe's  services  were,  it  is  hard  now  to  imagine. 
Professor  Minto  supposes  that  his  business  "  was  to  ascertain  and  report  the 
opinions  of  influential  persons,  and  keep  the  government  informed  as  far  as  he 
could  of  the  general  state  of  feeling."  When  Harley  fell,  Godolphin  continued 
to  employ  Defoe  as  a  government  secret  emissary  and  writer.  He  was  again  sent 
to  Scotland  in  1 708,  in  relation  to  the  suspected  invasion  of  that  country  by  the 
French;  but  he  found  time  to  keep  his  "Review"  going.  We  see  him  "trim- 
ming "  afresh,  with  masterly  disregard  to  every  appeal  save  that  of  his  purse,  when 
Godolphin  surrendered  the  treasurer's  staff,  and  Harley  once  more  became  prime 
minister.  "  My  duty,"  says  he,  with  that  wonderful  countenance  of  gravity,  and 
that  fine  air  of  outraged  honor,  which  express  him  in  his  political  writings  cer- 


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DANIEL   DEFOE  75 

tainly.  as  the  very  prince  of  humbugs,  "was  to  go  along  with  every  ministry,  so 
far  as  they  did  not  break  in  upon  the  constitution  and  the  laws  and  liberty  of  my 
country."  At  what  price  did  he  value  the  constitution  ?  And  how  much,  lean- 
ing across  the  counter  of  his  literary  calling,  would  he  ask  for  the  laws  and  liber- 
ties of  his  country  ?     Both  Godolphin  and  Harley,  no  doubt,  exactly  knew. 

But  enough  in  this  brief  sketch  has  been  said  of  him  as  politician,  journalist, 
controversialist,  spy.  He  heaped  pamphlet  upon  pamphlet,  volume  upon  volume, 
and  in  July,  1715,  was  found  guilty  of  what  was  called  a  scandalous  libel  against 
Lord  Anglesea.  Sentence  was  deferred,  but  he  was  never  brought  up  for  judg- 
ment. His  representations  of  ardent  devotion  to  the  ^Vhig  interest  seem  to  have 
procured  his  absolution.  Be  this  as  it  may,  it  is  extraordinary  to  reflect  that  he 
should  live  to  be  fifty-eight  years  of  age  before  he  could  find  it  in  him  to  produce 
that  masterpiece  of  romance,  "  Robinson  Crusoe,"  the  delight,  I  may  truly  call  it, 
of  all  reading  nations.  The  fiction  is  based  upon  the  experiences  of  Alexander 
Selkirk.  He  had  read  Steele's  story  of  that  man  lonely  in  the  South  Sea  island, 
and  Woodes  Roger's  account  of  the  discovery  of  him.  Sir  Walter  Scott  has 
pointed  out  that  Defoe  was  known  to  the  great  circumnavigator  Dampier,  and  he 
assumes  with  good  reason  that  he  drew  many  hints  from  the  conversation  and 
recollections  of  that  fine  seaman.  He  was  a  prosperous  man  when  he  wrote 
*'  Robinson  Crusoe,"  had  built  a  house  at  Stoke  Newington,  and  drove  in  his  own 
coach.  This  had  come  about  through  his  successful  connection  with  certain 
■ournals  ;  he  was  also  rapidly  producing,  and  nearly  all  that  he  wrote  sold  hand- 
:;omely.  Almost  as  many  fine  things  have  been  said  about  "  Robinson  Crusoe  '' 
as  about  Niagara  Falls,  or  sunrise  and  sunset.  The  world  has  decided  to  consider 
it  Defoe's  masterpiece,  and  to  neglect  all  else  that  he  wrote  for  it.  Nor  can  the 
world  be  blamed.  The  deliberate  and  dangerous  lewdness  of  Defoe  is  one  of  the 
most  deplorable  things  in  letters.  We  shelve  much  of  Smollett,  much  of  Field- 
ing, without  great  regret,  but  it  is  lamentable  that  works  of  powers  and  percep- 
tions so  supreme  as  "  Moll  Flanders"  and  "  Colonel  Jack  "  should  be  found  un- 
fit and  unreadable,  mfinitely  more  perilous  to  the  young  than  the  coarser,  but 
honester,  freedoms  of  Smollett  and  Fielding,  because  of  Defoe's  base  tradesman- 
like trick  of  representing  in  colors  as  tempting  as  possible  the  sins  which  with 
formal,  pulpitic,  hypocritical  gravity  he  entreats  you  to  avoid.  "  Robinson  Cru- 
soe "  is  wholesome  :  one  can  see  one's  daughter  with  that  book  in  her  hand  and 
feel  easy.  Yet  it  has  not  the  strength  nor  the  art  of  "  Roxana,"  "  Colonel  Jack," 
and  "  Moll  Flanders."  In  fact,  it  may  be  said  that  when  Defoe  set  about  to  write 
this  book  he  had  no  thoughts  whatever  of  art  in  his  head.  He  was  to  relate 
what  happened  to  a  castaway,  and  the  skill  shown  is  that  of  a  sailor  who  writes 
up  his  log-book.  No  one  could  have  been  more  astonished  by  the  success  of  the 
book  than  Defoe  himself.  He  afterward  went  to  work  to  communicate  a  need- 
less significance  to  the  narrativ^e,  whose  charm  is  its  eternal  grace  of  freshness  and 
simplicity,  by  writing  the  "  Serious  Reflections  of  Robinson  Crusoe,"  in  which  he 
would  have  us  believe  that  Crusoe's  story  is  an  allegory  based  on  Defoe's  own 
life.     This  is  accepted  by  some  even  in  our  own  time.      It  is  easy  to  understand 


76  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

that  Defoe  should  lose  no  opi)ortunity  to  recommend  his  works  by  every  species 
of  advertisement  ;  no  man  could  lie  in  a  literary  sense  with  more  self-compla- 
cency, and  a  clearer  conception  of  the  business  value  of  the  falsehood  ;  but  it  is 
wonderful  to  find  people  choosing  to  travesty  the  palpably  obvious,  sooner  than 
accept  the  plain  truth  as  it  lies  naked  on  the  face  of  the  printed  page. 

But  if  Defoe  had  never  written  a  line  of  "  Robinson  Crusoe,"  we  should 
know  him  to  be  a  great  genius  and  a  fine  artist  by  the  opening  pages  of  "  Col- 
onel Jack."  All  about  the  lives  of  the  three  boys,  their  sleeping  in  glass  houses, 
their  picking  of  pockets,  the  loss  of  the  money  in  the  hollow  tree,  and  then  the 
recovery  of  it,  is  in  its  kind  matchless  in  fiction.  Wonderfully  fine  too  are  many 
of  the  touches  in  "Moll  Flanders":  the  whole  story  of  her  descent  from  the 
honestv  of  a  simple  serving-maid  to  the  horrors  of  New^gate  and  transportation, 
is  so  masterful,  the  art  is  so  consummate,  the  impersonation  by  Defoe  of  the 
character  of  a  subtle  trollop  full  of  roguish  moralizings  and  thin  sentimentalities, 
is  so  extraordinary,  that  one  can  never  cease  to  deplore  that,  not  the  subject  of 
the  book,  but  Defoe's  indecent  handling  of  it,  should  compel  the  world  virtually 
to  taboo  it.  "  Roxana  "  is  also  on  the  condemned  list  for  the  same  reason.  But 
literature  could  sooner  spare  this  book  than  the  other  two.  It  was  completed 
by  another  hand^,  and  Defoe's  own  share  might  have  very  well  been  the  work  of 
the  person  who  wrote  the  sequel. 

Another  masterpiece  is  his  "  History  of  the  Plague."  This  shows  his  imagi- 
nation at  its  highest,  and  it  is  not  impossible  but  that  its  composition  may  have 
cost  him  more  trouble  than  "  Robinson  Crusoe  "  itself.  There  is  no  space  left 
to  deal  with  his  other  works.  Reference  can  only  be  made  to  "  Captain  Single- 
ton," "A  System  of  Magic,"  "A  History  of  the  Devil,"  "The  Family  In- 
structor," "  The  Plan  of  English  Commerce,"  "  A  New  Voyage  Round  the 
World,"  etc.  In  naming  these  I  abbreviate  the  titles.  Most  of  Defoe's  title- 
pages  epitomize  his  works,  and  merely  as  a  list  would  fill  a  stout  volume. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  Defoe  in  his  old  age  became  insane,  and  hid  him- 
self from  his  family  for  no  discoverable  reasons.  It  is  certain  that  in  September, 
1729,  he  mysteriously  removed  from  his  house,  and  went  into  hiding  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Greenwich.  From  his  secret  retreat  he  addressed  letters  to  his 
son-in-law  Baker,  complaining  of  his  having  been  inhumanly  ill-used  by  someone 
whom  Mr.  Lee,  one  of  his  biographers,  conjectures  was  Mist,  the  proprietor  of 
Misf s  Journal,  with  whom  Defoe  had  been  associated  in  business.  Other  biog- 
raphers seem  to  think  that  Defoe  was  merely  hiding  from  the  pursuit  of  his 
creditors,  and  dodging  in  his  old  dexterous  manner  the  obligation  of  making  over 
property  to  his  daughter  Hannah,  who  was  married  Jto  Baker.  For  two  years  he 
was  homeless  and  fugitive  ;  it  is  not  asserted,  however,  that  he  was  in  actual 
distress  at  the  time  of  his  death.  He  died  in  a  lodging  in  a  then  respectable 
neighborhood  called  Ropemaker's  Alley,  Moor  Fields,  April  26,  1731,  in  his 
seventieth  year. 


DEAN   SWIFT 


77 


DEAN    SWIFT 

By  Samuel  Archer 


'Spil^^iSS^^lfi^ 


(i 667-1 745) 

JONATHAN  Swift's  father  died  before  the  boy 
was  born,  and  the  care  of  his  education  was 
kindly  undertaken  by  Mr.  Godwin  Swift,  his 
uncle,  a  ver}^  eminent  attorney  at  Dublin,  who 
likewise  took  his  mother  and  his  sister  under  his 
protection,  and  thus  became  a  guardian  to  the 
family.  When  his  nephew  was. six  years  of  age 
he  sent  him  to  school  at  Kilkenny,  and  about 
eight  years  afterward  he  entered  him  a  student 
_;  of  Trinity  College  in*  Dublin,  where  Swift  lived 
in  perfect  regularity  and  in  an  entire  obedience 
to  the  statutes  ;  but  the  moroseness  of  his  temper 
often  rendered  him  unacceptable  to  his  compan- 
ions, so  that  he  was  little  rea^arded  and  less  beloved  ;  nor  were  the  academical 
exercises  agreeable  to  his  genius. 

He  held  logic  and  metaphysics  in  the  utmost  contempt,  and  he  scarcely  at- 
tended at  all  to  mathematics  and  natural  philosophy,  unless  to  turn  them  into  ridi- 
cule. The  studies  which  he  chiefly  followed  were  history  and  poetry,  in  which  he 
made  great  progress;  but  to  other  branches  of  science  he  had  given  so  very  lit- 
tle application,  that  when  he  appeared  as  a  candidate  for  the  degree  of  bachelor 
of  arts,  after  having  studied  four  years,  he  was  set  aside  on  account  of  insuf- 
ficiency, and  at  last  obtained  his  admission  spcciali  gratid,  a  phrase  which  in 
that  university  carries  with  it  the  utmost  marks  of  reproach.  Swift  was  fired  with 
indignation  at  the  treatment  he  had  received  in  Ireland,  and  therefore  resolved  to 
pursue  his  studies  at  O.xford.  However,  that  he  might  be  admitted  ad  eicndcin, 
he  was  obliged  to  carry  with  him  a  testimonial  of  his  degree.  The  expression 
spcciali gratid  is  so  peculiar  to  the  university  of  Dublin,  that  when  Mr.  Swift 
exhibited  his  testimonial  at  Oxford,  the  members  of  the  English  university  con- 
cluded that  the  w^ords  spcciali  gralid  must  signify  a  degree  conferred  in  reward 
of  some  extraordinary  diligence  and  learning.  He  was  immediately  admitted  ad 
c.2indem,  and  entered  himself  at  Hart  Hall,  now  Hartford  College,  where  he  con- 
stantly resided  (some  visits  to  his  mother,  at  Leicester,  and  to  Sir  William  Tem- 
ple, at  Moose  Park,  excepted)  till  he  took  his  degree  of  master  of  arts,  which  was 
in  the  year  1691.  And  in  order  to  recover  his  lost  time  he  now  studied  eight 
hours  daily  for  seven  years. 

Swift,  as  soon  as  he  had  quitted  the  University  of  Oxford,  lived  with  Sir  Will- 
iam Temple  as  his  friend  and  domestic  companion.     When  he  had  been  about 


78  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

two  years  with  Sir  William,  he  contracted  a  very  long  and  dangerous  illness  by 
eating  an  immoderate  quantity  of  fruit.  To  this  surfeit  he  was  often  heard 
to  ascribe  that  giddiness  in  his  head  which,  with  intermissions  sometimes  of 
longer  and  sometimes  of  shorter  continuance,  pursued  him  to  the  end  of  his  life. 

In  compliance  with  the  advice  of  physicians,  when  he  was  sufficiently  recov- 
ered to  travel,  he  went  to  Ireland,  to  try  the  effects  of  his  native  air  ;  but  find- 
ing the  greatest  benefit  arose  from  the  exercise  of  travelling,  he  followed  his  own 
inclination.  He  soon  returned  into  England,  and  was  again  received  in  a  most  af- 
fectionate manner  by  Sir  William  Temple,  who  was  then  settled  at  Shene,  where 
he  was  often  visited  by  King  William. 

Here  Swift  had  frequent  conversations  with  that  prince,  in  some  of  which 
the  king  offered  to  make  him  a  captain  of  horse,  which  offer,  in  splenetic  disposi- 
tions, he  always  seemed  sorry  to  have  refused  ;  but  at  the  time  he  had  resolved 
within  his  own  mind  to  take  orders  ;  and  during  his  whole  life  his  resolutions, 
when  once  fixed,  were  ev^er  after  immovable. 

About  this  time  he  assisted  Sir  William  Temple  in  revising  his  works.  He 
likewise  corrected  and  improved  his  own  "Tale  of  a  Tub,"  a  sketch  of  which  he 
had  drawn  up  while  he  was  a  student  at  Trinity  College,  Dublin.  Sir  William's 
conversation  naturally  turned  upon  political  subjects,  and  Swift  improved  the 
frequent  opportunities  he  had  of  acquiring  from  this  able  statesman  a  competent 
knowledge  of  public  affairs.  But  at  length  he  suspected  that  Sir  William  neg- 
lected to  provide  for  him,  merely  that  he  might  keep  him  in  his  family  ;  and  he 
resented  this  so  very  warmly  that  a  quarrel  ensued,  and  they  parted  in  the  year 
1694,  and  he  went  to  Ireland,  where  he  took  orders. 

Sir  William,  however,  notwithstanding  the  differences  between  them,  recom- 
mended him  in  the  strongest  terms  to  Lord  Capel,  then  lord-deputy,  who  gave 
him  a  prebend,  of  which  the  income  was  about  ^100  a  year.  Swift  soon  grew 
weary  of  his  preferment :  it  was  not  sufficiently  considerable,  and  was  at  so  great 
a  distance  from  the  metropolis  that  it  absolutely  deprived  him  of  that  conversa- 
tion and  society  in  which  he  deliorhted.  He  had  been  used  to  different  scenes  in 
England,  and  had  naturally  an  aversion  to  solitude  and  retirement.  He  was  glad, 
therefore,  to  resign  his  prebend  in  favor  of  a  friend,  and  to  return  to  Shene,  to 
Sir  William  Temple,  who  was  so  much  pleased  with  his  return,  which  he  consid- 
ered as  an  act  of  kindness  to  him  in  the  close  of  life,  that  a  sincere  reconciliation 
took  place,  and  they  lived  together  in  perfect  harmony  till  the  death  of  Sir  \Vill- 
iam.  By  his  will  he  left  him  a  considerable  legacy  in  money,  and  the  care,  trust, 
and  emolument  of  publishing  his  posthumous  works.  During  Swift's  residence 
at  Shene  he  became  intimately  acquainted  with  Miss  Johnson,  who  was  the 
daughter  of  Sir  William's  steward,  and  who  was  afterward  so  distinguished  and 
so  much  celebrated  in  Swift's  works  under  the  name  of  Stella. 

Soon  after  the  death  of  his  patron.  Swift  came  to  London,  and  took  the 
earliest  opportunity  of  transmitting  a  memorial  to  King  William,  under  the 
claim  of  a  promise  made  by  his  majesty  to  Sir  William  Temple,  "  that  Mr.  Swift 
should  have  the  first  vacancy  that  happened  among  the  prebends  of  Westminster 


DEAN    SWIFT  79 

or  Canterbury."  The  memorial  had  no  effect  ;  and,  indeed,  Swift  himself  after- 
ward declared  that  he  believed  the  king  never  received  it.  After  a  long  and 
fruitless  attendance  at  White  Hall,  Mr.  Swift  reluctantly  gave  up  all  thoughts  of 
a  settlement  in  England.  In  the  year  1701  he  took  his  doctor's  degree;  and 
toward  the  latter  end  of  fthat  year  King  William  died. 

On  the  accession  of  Queen  Anne,  Dr.  Swift  came  to  England.  It  cannot  be 
denied  that  the  chief  ministers  of  the  queen,  whether  distinguished  under  the  titles 
of  Whigs  or  Tories,  of  high-church  or  of  low-church,  were  from  the  beginning 
to  the  end  of  her  reign  encouragers  of  learning  and  patrons  of  learned  men. 
The  wits  of  that  era  were  numerous  and  eminent.  Amid  the  crowd,  yet  superior 
to  the  rest,  appeared  Dr.  Swift.  In  a  mixture  of  those  two  jarring  parties  called 
Whig  and  Tory,  consisted  the  first  ministry  of  Queen  Anne  ;  but  the  greater 
share  of  the  administration  was  committed  to  the  Whigs,  who  soon  engrossed  the 
whole.  The  queen,  whose  heart  was  naturally  inclined  toward  the  Tories,  re- 
mained an  unwilling  prisoner  several  years  to  the  Whigs,  till  Mr.  Harley  at  length 
took  her  majesty  out  of  their  hands,  and  during  the  remainder  of  her  life  surrounded 
her  with  a  set  of  Tories,  under  the  conduct  of  the  Duke  of  Ormond  and  himself. 

Dr.  Swift  was  known  to  the  great  men  of  each  denomination.  It  is  certain 
that  he  was  bred  up  and  educated  with  Whigs,  at  least  with  such  as  may  be 
found  ranged  under  the  title.  His  motives  for  quitting  Whigism  for  Toryism 
appear  throughout  his  works.  He  had  commenced  as  a  political  author  in  1701, 
when  he  published  "  A  Discourse  on  the  Contests  and  Dissensions  between  the 
Nobles  and  Commons  in  Athens  and  Rome,  with  the  Consequences  they  had 
upon  both  States."  This  was  written  in  defence  of  King  William  and  his  minis- 
ters against  the  violent  proceedings  in  the  House  of  Commons.  But  from  this 
time  to  the  vear  1708,  Lord  Orrery  informs  us,  he  did  not  write  any  political 
pamphlet.  From  this  year  to  17 10  he  worked  hard  to  undermine  the  Whigs  and 
to  open  a  way  for  the  Tories  to  come  into  power.  His  intimacy  with  Harley 
commenced,  as  may  be  deduced  from  his  works,  in  October,  1710.  It  seems  un- 
deniable that  a  settlement  in  England  was  the  constant  object  of  Dr.  Swift's  am- 
bition ;  so  that  his  promotion  to  a  deanery  in  Ireland  was  rather  a  disappoint- 
ment than  a  reward,  as  appears  by  many  expressions  in  his  letters  to  Mr.  Gay 
and  Mr.  Pope. 

The  business  which  first  introduced  him  to  Harley  was  a  commission  sent  to 
him  bv  the  primate  of  Ireland  to  solicit  the  queen  to  release  the  clergy  of  that 
kingdom  from  the  twentieth-penny  and  first-fruits.  As  soon  as  he  received  the 
primate's  instructions,  he  resolved  to  wait  on  Harley;  but  before  the  first  inter- 
view he  took  care  to  get  himself  represented  as  a  person  who  had  been  ill  used 
by  the  last  ministry,  because  he  would  not  go  such  lengths  as  they  would  have 
had  him.  The  new  minister  received  him  with  open  arms,  soon  after  accom- 
plished his  business,  bade  him  come  often  to  see  him  privately,  and  told  him 
that  he  must  bring  him  to  the  knowledge  of  Mr.  St.  John  (Lord  Bolingbroke). 
Swift  presently  became  acquainted  with  the  rest  of  the  ministry,  who  appear  to 
have  courted  and  caressed  him  with  uncommon  assiduity. 


80  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

From  this  era  to  the  death  of  Queen  Anne  we  find  him  fighting  on  the  side 
of  the  ministers  and  maintaining  their  cause  in  pamphlets,  poems,  and  weekly 
papers.  But  notwithstanding  his  services  to  the  ministry,  he  remained  without 
preferment  till  the  year  1713,  when  he  was  made  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's.  In  point 
of  power  and  revenue  such  a  deanery  might  appear  no  inconsiderable  promo- 
tion ;  but  to  an  ambitious  mind  whose  perpetual  aim  was  a  settlement  in  Eng- 
land, a  dignity  in  any  other  kingdom  must  appear  only  an  honorable  and  profit- 
able banishment.  There  is  great  reason  to  imagine  that  the  temper  of  Swift 
might  occasion  his  English  friends  to  wish  him  happily  and  properly  promoted  at 
a  distance.  His  spirit  was  ever  untractable,  the  motions  of  his  genius  irregu- 
lar. He  assumed  more  the  airs  of  a  patron  than  a  friend.  He  affected  rather  to 
dictate  than  advise,  and  was  elated  with  the  appearance  of  enjoying  ministerial 
confidence. 

Dr.  Swift  had  little  reason  to  rejoice  in  the  land  where  his  lot  had  fallen  ;  for 
upon  his  arrival  in  Ireland  to  take  possession  of  his  deanery,  he  found  the  vio- 
lence of  party  reigning  in  that  kingdom  to  the  highest  degree.  The  common 
people  were  taught  to  look  upon  him  as  a  Jacobite,  and  they  proceeded  so  far  in 
their  detestation  as  to  throw  stones  at  him  as  he  passed  through  the  streets.  The 
chapter  of  St.  Patrick's,  like  the  rest  of  the  kingdom,  received  him  with  great  re- 
luctance. They  thwarted  him  in  every  particular  he  proposed.  He  was  avoided 
as  a  pestilence,  opposed  as  an  invader,  and  marked  out  as  an  enemy  to  his  coun- 
try. Such  was  his  first  reception  as  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's,  Fewer  talents  and 
less  firmness  must  have  yielded  to  such  violent  opposition.  But  so  strange  are 
the  revolutions  of  this  world  that  Dean  Swift,  who  was  then  the  detestation  of 
the  Irish  rabble,  lived  to  govern  them  with  absolute  sway. 

He  made  no  longer  stay  in  Ireland  than  was  requisite  to  establish  himself  a 
dean,  and  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1714,  returned  to  England.  He  found  his 
great  friends  at  the  helm  much  disunited  among  themselves.  He  saw  the  queen 
declining  in  health  and  distressed  in  situation.  The  part  which  he  had  to  act 
upon  this  occasion  was  not  so  difficult  as  it  was  disagreeable  ;  he  exerted  all 
his  skill  to  reunite  the  ministers.  Finding  his  endeavors  fruitless,  he  retired  to  a 
friend's  house  in  Berkshire,  where  he  remained  till  the  queen's  death,  an  event 
which  fi.xed  the  period  of  his  views  m  England  and  made  him  return  as  fast  as 
possible  to  his  deanery  in  Ireland,  oppressed  with  grief  and  discontent. 

His  works  from  the  3'ear  1714  to  the  year  1720  are  few  in  number  and  of 
small  importance.  "  Poems  to  Stella  "  and  "  Trifles  to  Dr.  Sheridan  "  fill  up  a  great 
part  of  that  period.  But  during  this  interval,  Lord  Orrery  supposes,  he  employed 
his  time  in  writing  "  Gulliver's  Travels."  His  mind  was  likewise  fully  occupied 
by  an  affecting  private  incident.  In  171 3  he  had  formed  an  intimacy  with  a 
young  lady  in  London,  to  whom  he  became  a  kind  of  preceptor  ;  her  real  name 
was  Vanhomrigh,  and  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  Dutch  merchant  who  settled 
and  died  at  Dublin.  This  lady  was  a  great  admirer  of  reading,  and  had  a  taste 
for  poetry.  This  increased  her  regard  for  Swift  till  it  grew  to  affection,  and  she 
made  him  an    offer  of  marriage,  which  he  refused,  and  upon  this  occasion  he 


DEAN   SWIFT  81 

wrote  his  little  poem  of  "  Cadenus  and  Vanessa."  The  young  lady  from  this  time 
was  called  Vanessa  ;  and  her  mother  dying  in  1714,  she  and  her  sister  followed 
the  dean  to  Ireland,  where  he  frequently  visited  them  ;  and  he  kept  up  a  literary 
correspondence  with  Vanessa  until  her  death,  which  followed  closely  on  a  bitter 
quarrel  with  him. 

In  the  year  i  720  he  began  to  reassume  the  character  of  a  political  writer.  A 
small  pamphlet,  in  defence  of  the  Irish  manufactories,  was  supposed  to  be  his  first 
essay,  in  Ireland,  in  that  kind  of  writing  ;  and  to  that  pamphlet  he  owed  the  turn 
of  the  popular  tide  in  his  favor.  The  pamphlet  recommended  the  universal  use 
of  the  Irish  manufactures  within  the  kingdom.  Some  little  pieces  of  poetry  to 
the  same  purpose  were  no  less  acceptable  and  engaging  ;  nor  was  the  dean's  at- 
tachment to  the  true  interest  of  Ireland  any  longer  doubted.  His  patriotism  was 
as  manifest  as  his  wit  ;  he  was  looked  upon  with  pleasure  and  respect  as  he 
passed  through  the  streets,  and  had  attained  to  so  high  a  degree  of  popularity  as 
to  become  the  arbitrator  in  disputes  among  his  neighbors. 

But  the  popular  affection  which  the  dean  had  hitherto  acquired,  may  be  said 
not  to  have  been  universal  until  the  publication  of  the  Drapier's  Letters,  in  1724, 
which  made  all  ranks  and  professions  universal  in  his  applause.  These  letters 
were  occasioned  by  a  patent  having  been  obtained  by  one  William  Wood,  to  coin 
^180,000  of  halfpence  for  the  use  of  Ireland.  The  dean,  in  character  of  a  draper, 
wrote  a  series  of  letters  to  the  people,  urging  them  not  to  receive  this  money ; 
and  Wood,  though  powerfully  supported,  was  compelled  to  withdraw  his  patent, 
and  his  money  was  totally  suppressed.  Never  was  an}^  name  bestowed  with  more 
universal  approbation  than  the  name  of  the  Drapier  was  bestowed  upon  the  dean, 
who  had  no  sooner  assumed  it  than  he  became  the  idol  of  Ireland,  even  to  a  de- 
.  gree  of  devotion  ;  and  bumpers  were  poured  forth  to  the  Drapier,  as  large  and  as 
frequent  as  to  the  glorious  and  immortal  memory  of  King  William  III.  Ac- 
clamations and  vows  for  his  prosperity  attended  him  wherever  he  went,  and  his 
portrait  was  painted  in  every  street  in  Dublin. 

The  dean  was  consulted  in  all  points  relating  to  domestic  policy  in  general, 
and  to  the  trade  of  Ireland  in  particular;  but  he  was  more  immediately  looked 
on  as  the  legislator  of  the  weavers,  who  frequently  came  to  him  in  a  body  to 
receive  his  advice  in  settling  the  rates  of  their  manufactures,  and  the  wages  of 
their  journeymen.  When  elections  were  pending  for  the  city  of  Dublin,  many 
of  the  companies  refused  to  declare  themselves  till  they  had  consulted  his  senti- 
ments and  inclinations. 

In  1727  died  his  beloved  Stella,  in  the  forty-fourth  year  of  her  age,  regretted 
by  the  dean  with  such  excess  of  sorrow  as  only  the  keenest  sensibility  Could  feel, 
and  the  most  excellent  character  excite.  After  the  death  of  Stella  his  life  be- 
came very  retired,  and  the  austerity  of  his  temper  increased  ;  his  public  days  for 
receiving  company  were  discontinued,  and  he  even  shunned  the  society  of  his 
most  intimate  friends. 

We  have  now  conducted  the  dean  through  the  most  interesting  circumstances 
of  his  life,  to  the  fatal  period  wherein  he  was  utterly  deprived  of  his  reason,  a 

G 


82 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


loss  which  he  often  seemed  to  foresee,  and  prophetically  lamented  to  his  friends. 
The  total  deprivation  of  his  senses  came  upon  him  by  degrees.  In  the  year 
I  736  he  was  seized  with  a  violent  fit  of  giddiness :  he  was  at  that  time  writing  a 
satirical  poem,  called  the  "  Legion  Club  ; "  but  he  found  the  efifects  of  his  giddi- 
ness so  dreadful  that  he  left  the  poem  unfinished,  and  never  afterward  attempted 
a  composition  of  any  length,  either  in  verse  or  prose.  However,  his  conversation 
still  remained  the  same,  lively  and  severe  ;  but  his  memory  gradually  grew  worse 
and  worse,  and  as  that  decreased  he  grew  every  day  more  fretful  and  impatient. 
From  the  year  i  739  to  the  year  i  744  his  passions  grew  so  violent  and  ungov- 
ernable, his  memory  so  decayed,  and  his  reason  so  depraved,  that  the  utmost  pre- 
cautions were  taken  to  prevent  all  strangers  from  approaching  him,  for  till  then 
he  had  not  appeared  totally  incapable  of  conversation.  He  now,  however,  grew 
rapidly  worse,  and  died  in  1745.  He  had  willed  all  his  fortune  to  be  used  in 
founding  a  home  for  incurable  madmen. 


ALEXANDER  POPE* 

By  Austin  Dobson 


(1688- 1  744) 


M 


ORE  than  two  hundred  years  ago, 
on  May  21,  1688,  was  born  in 
Lombard  Street,  London,  a  poet  whose 
influence,  for  nearly  a  century,  reigned 
paramount  in  English  verse.  He  had 
not  been  long  dead,  it  is  true,  when 
his  supremacy  was  contested,  but  to  so 
little  purpose  that  two  decades  passed 
away  before  his  overbold  assailant 
mustered  courage  to  follow  up  his  first 
attack.  Then,  after  an  interval,  the 
challenge  was  renewed,  and  for  a  long 
period  the  literary  world  rang  with  the 
blows  of  the  opposing  champions. 
Was  Alexander  Pope  a  great  poet  or 
was  he  not  ?  It  was  Thomas  Warton 
who  first  put  that  question,  and  it  was  William  Bowles  who  repeated  it.  Against 
Warton  was  Warburton  ;  against  Bowles  were  Byron  and  Campbell  and  Roscoe, 
with  a  host  of  minor  combatants.  When  at  last  the  contest  seemed  to  droop  it 
was  only  to  begin  again  upon  a  new  issue  ;  and  the  lists  shook  beneath  the  in- 
road of  De  Quincey  and  Macaulay.     Was  Pope  a  "  correct  "  poet  ?     The  latter- 

"  Copyright,  1S94,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


ALEXANDER   POPE  83 

day  reader,  turning  cautiously — it  may  be  languidly — the  records  of  that  ancient 
controversy,  wonders  a  little  at  the  dust  and  hubbub.  If  he  trusts  to  his  first 
impression,  he  will,  in  all  probability,  be  content  to  waive  discussion  by  claiming 
for  Pope  a  considerably  lower  place  than  for  Shakespeare  or  for  Milton  ;  and 
upon  the  point  of  his  "correctness"  will  decide  discreetly,  in  the  spirit  of  the  im- 
mortal Captain  Bunsby,  that  much  depends  upon  the  precise  application  of  the 
term.  But  let  him  have  a  care.  The  debate  is  an  endless  one,  eternally  seduc- 
tive, irrepressibly  renascent,  and  hopelessly  bound  up  with  the  ineradicable  op- 
positions of  human  nature.  Sooner  or  later  he  will  be  drawn  into  the  conflict 
and  cry  his  slogan  with  the  rest.  If,  in  the  ensuing  pages,  their  writer  seems  to 
shun  that  time-honored  discussion,  as  well  as  some  other  notable  difficulties  of 
Pope's  biograph}',  he  does  so  mainly  lest  they  should,  in  Bunyan's  homespun 
phrase, 

" — prove  ad  infinitum  and  eat  out 
The  thing  that  he  already  is  about," 

to  wit,  the  recalling  of  Pope's  work  and  story. 

Pope's  father  was  a  London  linen -merchant,  who,  according  to  Spence, 
"dealt  in  Hollands  wholesale."  His  mother  was  of  good  extraction,  being  the 
daughter  of  one  William  Turner,  of  York.  Both  were  Roman  Catholics,  at  a 
time  when  to  be  of  that  faith  in  England  was  to  suffer  many  social  disabilities  ; 
and  it  was  perhaps  in  consequence  of  these  that,  about  the  time  of  the  Revolu- 
tion, the  elder  Pope  bought  a  small  house  at  Binfield,  on  the  skirts  of  Windsor 
Forest.  Here  he  lived  upon  his  means  and  cultivated  his  garden,  a  taste  which 
he  transmitted  to  his  son,  who,  under  the  care  of  his  mother  and  a  nurse  named 
Mary  Beach,  grew  from  a  sickly  infant  into  a  frail,  large-e3'ed  boy  with  a  sweet 
voice,  an  eager,  precocious  temperament,  and  an  inordinate  love  of  books,  from 
copying  the  type  of  which  he  first  learned  to  write.  Like  his  father,  he  was 
slightly  deformed,  while  from  his  mother  he  derived  a  life-long  tendency  to  head- 
ache. His  early  education  was  of  a  most  miscellaneous  character.  After  some 
tuition  from  the  family  priest,  he  passed  to  a  school  at  Twyford,  where  he  is  said 
to  have  been  flogged  for  lampooning  the  master.  Thence  he  went  to  a  second 
school,  where  he  learned  but  little.  As  a  boy,  however,  he  had  tried  his  hand  at 
translating,  and  had  tacked  together,  from  reminiscences  of  Ogilby,  a  kind  of 
Homeric  drama  to  be  acted  by  his  playmates,  with  the  gardener  for  Ajax.  But 
his  real  education  began  at  Binfield,  where,  when  between  twelve  and  thirteen, 
he  resolutely  sat  down  to  teach  himself  Latin,  French,  and  Greek.  Between 
twelve  and  twenty  he  must  have  read  enormously  and  written  as  indefatigably. 
Among  other  things,  he  composed  an  epic  of  Alcandcr,  Prince  of  Rhodes,  which 
is  said  to  have  extended  to  four  thousand  lines,  and  its  versification  was  so  fin- 
ished that  he  used  some  of  the  couplets  long  afterward  for  maturcr  work.  His 
earliest  critic  was  his  father,  who  would  sit  in  judgment  on  his  son's  perform- 
ances, ruthlessly  "sending  him  down  "  when  the  Muse  proved  unusually  stubborn. 
"  These  be  good  rhymes,"  he  would  say  when  he  was  pleased. 


84  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

The  quiet,  orderly  household  in  Windsor  Forest  received  but  few  visitors,  and 
those  chiefly  of  the  family  faith.  Such,  for  example,  were  the  Carylls  of  West 
Grmstead,  and  the  Blounts  of  Mapledurham,  where  there  were  two  bright-eyed 
daughters  of  Pope's  own  age,  the  "  fair-hair'd  Martha  and  Teresa  brown,"  whose 
names,  linked  in  Gay's  dancing  verse,  were  afterward  to  be  indissolubly  connected 
with  that  of  their  Binfield  neighbor.  At  this  date,  however,  they  must  have  been 
school-girls  at  Hammersmith,  under  some  pre-Thackerayan  Miss  Pinkerton,  or 
else  were  being  "  finished  "  at  that  Paris  establishment  whence  they  derived  the 
foreign  cachet  which  is  said  to  have  been  part  of  their  charm.  Another  friend 
was  the  ex-statesman  and  ambassador,  Sir  William  Trumbull  of  East  Hamp- 
stead,  who  compared  artichokes  with  the  father  and  read  poetry  with  the  son. 
To  Trumbull  Pope  submitted  some  of  his  earliest  verses,  and  from  him,  it  seems, 
received  much  valuable  advice,  including  a  recommendation  to  translate  Homer. 
Another  acquaintance  was  the  minor  poet  and  criticaster,  William  Walsh,  who 
gave  his  young  friend  that  memorable  (and  somewhat  ambiguous)  injunction  to 
"study  the  ancients"  and  "be  correct."  He  had  been  introduced  to  Walsh  by 
another  man  of  letters,  whose  acquaintance  he  must  have  made  during  one  of  his 
brief  excursions  to  London,  the  whilom  dramatist  Wycherley — now  a  broken 
septuagenarian,  but  still  retaining  a  sort  of  bankrupt  bcl  air.  To  Wycherley,  who 
could  not  tear  himself  from  his  favorite  St.  James's,  the  youthful  Pope  wrote  lit- 
erary letters,  being  even  decoyed  into  patching  and  revising  the  old  beau's  senile 
verses.  Another  of  his  con'espondents  was  Henry  Cromwell — Gay's  "honest, 
hatless  Cromwell,  with  red  breeches,"  who  at  this  time  was  pla}ing  the  part  of  an 
elderly  Phaon  to  the  Sappho  of  a  third-rate  poetess,  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Thomas. 
The  epistles  of  the  boy  at  Binfield  to  these  battered  men  about  town,  when  not 
discussing  metres  and  the  precepts  of  M.  the  Abbd  Bossu,  in  a  style  modelled 
upon  Balzac  and  Voiture,  are  sometimes  sorry  reading.  But  both  Wycherley  and 
Cromwell  were  wits  and  men  of  education,  and  it  is  not  difficult  to  pardon  that 
morbid,  over-active  mind  for  occasional  vagrancy  in  its  efforts  after  some  con- 
genial escape  from  the  Tory  fox-hunters  of  Berkshire  and  the  ribald  drinking 
songs  of  Durfey. 

By  I  71 1,  when  Pope  was  three-and-twenty,  his  intercourse  with  Wycherley 
and  Cromwell  had  practically  ceased,  and  "  knowing  Walsh  "  was  dead.  But  he 
had  already  obtained  a  hearing  as  a  poet.  He  had  written  a  series  of  "  Pastorals" 
in  the  reigning  taste,  a  taste  which,  under  guise  of  imitating  Theocritus  and  Vir- 
gil, not  only  tra^nsf erred  to  our  bleaker  shores  the  fauna  and  flora  of  Italy  and 
Greece,  but  brought  along  with  them  the  light-clad  (and  somewhat  embarrassed) 
Delias  and  Sylvias  of  those  sunnier  lands.  Pope,  indeed,  partly  modified  this. 
He  drew  the  line  at  wolves,  for  instance,  though  (as  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen  suggests) 
this  mattered  little  when  altars  and  milk-white  sacrificial  bulls  were  still  "perpetu- 
ally retained."  But  the  main  feature  of  the  "  Pastorals"  was  less  their  subject 
than  their  versification,  which  in  these  earliest  efforts  was  already  as  finished  and 
as  artful  as  anything  Pope  ever  wrote,  and  was  far  above  the  work  of  his  contem- 
poraries.    Lansdowne  ("  Granville  the  polite  "),    Congreve,  Garth,  Halifax,  and 


ALEXANDER    POPE  85 

others  praised  them  warmly  in  MS.,  and  left-legged  Jacob  Tonson  came  cap  in 
hand  to  solicit  them  for  the  sixth  part  of  his  "  Miscellany,"  where  they  ultimately 
wound  up  that  volume,  balancing  (or  rather  over-balancing)  the  "Pastorals"  of 
Ambrose  Philips,  which  began  it.  To  the  same  collection  Pope  contributed  an 
imitation  of  Chaucer,  and  an  episode  from  the  "  Iliad."  The  immediate  success  of 
these  performances  seems  to  have  set  him  upon  his  next  poem,  the  "  Essay  on 
Criticism,"  which  was  published  by  Lewis  in  171 1.  His  mastery  over  his  medium 
was  still  more  noticeable  than  the  originality  of  his  thought.  But  this  cento  of 
exquisitely  chiselled  critical  commonplaces  goes  far  toward  being  a  ^/^^/ rt''a??^z^r^ 
of  mere  manipulative  skill  ;  and  we  are  still,  by  our  daily  use  of  some  of  its  lines, 
justifying  the  truth  of  Addison's  dictum,  that  "  Wit  and  fine  Writing  doth  not 
consist  so  much  in  advancing  Things  that  are  new  as  in  giving  Things  that  are 
known  an  agreeable  Turn." 

To  the  "  Essay  on  Criticism  "  succeeded  one  of  Pope's  most  brilliant  poems, 
the  famous  "  Rape  of  the  Lock."  In  its  first  form  it  appeared,  together  with 
some  minor  poems  and  translations,  in  a  volume  of  "  Miscellanies''  published  by 
Tonson's  rival,  Lintot.  Its  wf///"  was  the  theft  by  a  certain  Lord  Petre  of  one 
of  the  tresses  of  Miss  Arabella  or  "  Belle  "  Fermor,  and  this  venial  larceny  having 
somewhat  strained  the  relations  of  the  two  families  concerned.  Pope  was  invited 
to  compose  matters  by  invocation  of  the  Muse.  The  poem  in  its  first  "  Miscel- 
lany" form  consisted  of  no  more  than  two  cantos  ;  but  Pope,  confident  of  his 
powers,  and  certainly  with  a  better  knowledge  of  his  own  method  than  his  critics 
could  have  possessed,  boldly  took  advantage  of  its  success  to  expand  it  into  five 
cantos  by  the  addition  of  a  Rosicrucian  machinery  of  sylphs  and  gnomes.  This 
apparently  hazardous  experiment  was  perfectly  successful,  and  the  "  Rape  of  the 
Lock  "  became  what  it  remains,  the  typical  example  of  raillery  in  English  verse 
— the  solitary  specimen  of  sustained  and  airy  grace.  If  it  has  faults,  they  are  the 
faults  of  the  time,  and  not  of  the  poem,  the  execution  of  which  is  a  marvel  of 
ease,  good  humor,  and  delicate  irony.  Another  of  Pope's  efforts  at  this  date  was 
"  Windsor  Forest,"  a  theme  which,  assuming  that  to  be  the  best  which  lies  near- 
est, should  have  afforded  material  for  another  enduring  success.  But  Pope,  with 
a  matchless  eye  for  manners,  looked  at  nature  with  the  unpurged  vision  of  his 
generation,  and  the  poem,  though  not  without  dignity  and  beauty  of  versifica- 
tion, is,  to  the  modern  reader,  cold  and  conventional. 

To  the  reader  under  Anne  it  was  otherwise,  for  to  him  "  verdant  isles  "  and 
"  waving  groves  "  and  the  whole  farrago  of  gradus  epithets  were  not  only  grate- 
ful but  indispensable.  "  Mr.  Pope,"  wrote  Swift  to  Stella  under  date  of  March, 
1 713,  "has  published  a  fine  poem  called  'Windsor  Forest.'  Read  it."  This  is 
the  only  time  Pope  is  mentioned  in  that  memorable  journal  (now  nearing  its 
closing  pages)  and  it  scarcely  points  to  any  close  relations.  But,  by  and  by, 
when  Swift  came  back  from  his  Irish  deanery  to  reconcile  Oxford  and  Bolmg- 
broke,  he  seems  to  have  made  Pope's  personal  acquaintance,  and  to  have  begun 
the  correspondence  which  lasted  so  long.  By  Swift,  Pope  was  introduced  to 
Oxford,  to  his  later  "  guide,  philosopher,  and  friend,"  Bolingbroke,  to  the  gentle 


86  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

and  humane  Atterbury,  Bishop  of  Rochester,  to  Prior  and  Parnell,  to  Arbuth- 
not,  best  of  men  and  physicians — some  of  whom  he  mentions  in  the  "  Prologue 
to  the  Satires."     Swift,  he  says  : 

"  endur'd  my  lays  ; 
The  courtly  Talbot,  Somers,  Sheffield  read  ; 
Ev'n  mitred  Rochester  would  nod  the  head, 
And  St.  yohns  self  (great  Dryden's  friends  before) 
With  open  arms  receiv'd  one  Poet  more." 

Closely  connected  with  the  group  of  Pope's  connections  at  this  time  was  the  fa- 
mous literary  association  known  as  the  "  Scriblerus  Club,"  the  avowed  object  of 
which  was  to  satirize  the  abuses  of  human  learning.  The  dispersal  of  its  mem- 
bers at  the  death  of  Anne  interrupted  this  enterprise,  which  never  extended 
beyond  a  first  book  —  a  fragment  which  must,  however,  be  held  to  have  been 
unusually  pregnant  in  suggestion,  since  it  contained  the  germs  of  "  Gulliver's 
Travels"  and  the  "  Dunciad."  But  Pope's  life  at  this  point  grows  too  compli- 
cated to  be  pursued  in  detail,  and  it  will  be  impossible  henceforth  to  do  more 
than  note  briefly  its  chief  incidents.  Trumbull's  counsel  to  him  to  translate 
Homer,  and  his  first  essay  in  Tonson's  "  Miscellany,"  have  already  been  men- 
tioned. In  a  later  volume  of  "Miscellany"  poems  edited  by  Steele,  he  had 
printed  some  specimens  from  the  "  Odyssey,"  and  in  the  following  year  he  em- 
barked in  the  great  work  of  his  middle  life,  the  translation  of  the  "  Iliad."  By 
1 715  the  first  volume,  containing  four  books,  was  issued  to  the  subscribers, 
whose  roll,  ennobled  by  the  patronage  of  Oxford  and  Bolingbroke,  and  extended 
by  the  imperious  advocacy  of  Swift,  included  almost  everyone  of  importance. 
The  only  blot  upon  its  brilliant  success  is  the  unfortunate  quarrel  with  Addison, 
which  led  to  the  portrait  of  Atticus. 

Early  in  1716,  not  long  after  the  death  of  Wycherley,  Pope  moved  from 
Binfield  to  Chiswick.  His  house,  in  what  was  then  known  as  the  "  New  Build- 
ings," but  is  now  Mawson's  Row,  still  exists  down  a  turning  off  the  Mall,  not 
very  far  from  the  old  Church  where  Hogarth  lies  buried,  and  from  Chiswick 
House,  the  mansion  of  Lord  Burlington,  under  whose  wing  Pope  describes  him- 
self as  residing.  Here,  for  a  couple  of  years,  were  delivered  those  letters,  upon 
whose  backs  or  envelopes,  piously  preserved  in  the  British  Museum,  the  "  paper- 
sparing  "  poet  penned  his  daily  tale  of  Homeric  translation,  completing  two 
more  volumes  of  the  "Iliad"  during  his  sojourn  in  Mawson's  Row.  At  this 
time  he  was  twenty-eight,  and  may  therefore  be  assumed  to  be  accurately  repre- 
sented in  the  portrait  painted  by  Kneller  in  1716,  and  mezzotinted  a  year  later 
by  Smith.  Here  he  appears  as  a  slight,  delicate  young  man,  wearing  a  close- 
fitting  vest  or  tunic,  and,  in  lieu  of  a  wig,  the  dressing  or  "night-cap"  which  took 
its  place.  His  keen,  shaven  face  is  already  worn  by  work  and  ill-health,  and 
conspicuous  for  the  large  and  brilliant  eves  to  which  he  refers,  in  his  "  Epistle  to 
Arbuthnot,"  as  one  of  his  noticeable  features. 

Besides  the  poems  already  mentioned,  he  had,  in    1715,    produced  another 


ALEXANDER    POPE  87 

imitation  of  Chaucer,  thie  "  Temple  of  Fame,"  an  efTort  whicli  has  never  tal^en 
high  rank  among  his  works.  But  while  at  Chiswick  he  published,  in  addition  to 
instalments  of  the  "  Iliad,"  two  pieces  of  considerable  merit,  although  they  are 
scarcely  regarded  by  the  critics  of  this  age  with  the  enthusiasm  they  excited  in 
Pope's  earliest  admirers.  One  is  the  celebrated  "  Elegy  to  the  Memory  of  an 
Unfortunate  Lady,"  which  perhaps  owes  some  of  its  reputation  to  the  difficulty 
experienced  in  identifying  the  "ever  injur'd  Shade"  intended.  She  is  now 
understood  to  have  been  a  much-persecuted  Mrs.  Weston,  who,  although  she 
suffered  many  griefs,  did  not  (as  her  poet  implies)  put  an  end  to  her  own  life  in 
consequence.  The  other,  under  the  title  of  "  Eloisa  to  Abelard,"  versifies  the 
Latin  letters  of  that  distinguished  amorist  to  her  lover.  It  is  impossible  to  deny 
to  both  these  works  the  utmost  amount  of  artful  development  and  verbal  finish. 
All  that  skill  can  do  in  the  simulation  of  sincerity  Pope  has  done.  "The  Epistle 
of  Eloisa,"  he  tells  a  correspondent,  "grows  warm,  and  begins  to  have  some 
breathings  of  the  heart  in  it,  which  may  make  posterity  think  I  was  in  love." 
With  all  submission,  this  is  precisely  the  illusion  which  is  absent,  and  it  is  per- 
fectly possible  for  the  most  sympathetic  reader  to  peruse  the  balanced  outpour- 
ings of  "  Fulbert's  niece"  without  the  slightest  tendency  to  that  0/06 us  Jiystcricus 
\vhich  all  persons  of  sensibility  must  desire  to  experience.  Yet  it  must  neverthe- 
less be  admitted  that  these  poems  are  the  best  examples  of  a  vein  .which  is 
not  native  to  their  writer,  and  that,  in  them.  Pope  comes  nearer  to  genuine 
pathos  than  in  any  other  of  his  works.  Next  to  these,  the  only  literary  event  of 
this  portion  of  his  cai-eer  is  his  connection  with  the  deplorable  "Three  Hours 
after  Marriage,"  a  farce  in  which  he  was  assisted  by  Arbuthnot  and  Gay,  the 
latter  of  whom  bore  the  blame  of  the  play's  failure.  Pope's  old  enemy  Dennis, 
was  caricatured  in  it  as  Sir  Tremendous ;  but  it  had  also  the  effect  of  adding 
another  and  abler  foe  to  the  list  of  his  opponents,  the  player  and  manager,  CoUev 
Gibber,  whose  open  ridicule  of  a  part  of  this  ill-judged  jcit  d' esprit  began  the 
feud  which  ultimately  secured  for  him  the  supreme  honors  of  the  "  Dunciad." 

But  although  Pope's  militant  nature  never  feared  to  make  an  enemy,  his 
friends  were  still  in  the  majority.  His  "  Homer,"  with  its  magnificent  subscrip- 
tion list,  had  opened  a  wider  world  to  him  ;  and  his  new  associates  seem  for  the 
time  to  have  partially  seduced  him  from  his  valetudinarian  regime  and  ten  hours 
daily  study.  In  his  varied  and  alembicated  correspondence  we  track  him  here 
and  there,  at  Oxford  or  at  Bath,  studying  architecture  with  my  Lord  Burlington 
and  gardening  with  mv  Lord  Bathurst  or  "  beating  the  rounds  "  (probably  only 
in  metaphor)  with  wilder  wits  such  as  my  Lord  of  Warwick  and  Holland.  One 
of  the  prettiest  of  Pope's  missives  (some  of  them  are  not  pretty)  to  "  Mademoi- 
selles de  Maple-Durham,"  as  he  styles  the  Blounts,  describes  a  visit  he  had  paid 
to  Queen  Garoline's  maids  of  honor  at  Hampton  Gourt,  the  Bellenden  and 
Lepel  of  his  minor  verses.  He  dilates  upon  their  monotonous  life  of  hunting, 
etiquette,  and  Westphalia  ham,  and  then,  not  (as  Garruthcrs  suggests)  without 
oblique  intention  of  lighting  a  spark  of  jealousy  in  the  fair  Martha's  bosom, 
records  how  he  walked  for  three  or  four  mortal  hours  b}-  moonlight  with  Mrs. 


88  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

Lepel,  meeting  never  a  creature  of  quality  but  his  Majesty  King  George  I., 
giving  audience  to  his  Vice  Chamberlain  "all  alone  under  the  garden  wall." 
Another  epistolary  idyl  to  Martha  Blount,  of  which  there  are  at  least  four  rep- 
licas, relates  the  sentimental  death  by  lightning  of  the  two  haymakers  at  Stan- 
ton Harcourt.  Did  Pope  write  this  letter  ?  or  did  Gay  ?  Or  did  they  write  it 
both  together  ?  This  is  a  question  which  Pope's  editors  have  failed  to  settle. 
At  all  events,  a  similar  composition  went  to  another  of  Pope's  flames,  the  brill- 
iant Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  now  absent  from  England  with  her  husband, 
who  was  ambassador  at  Constantinople.  Clever  Lady  Mary,  however,  entirely 
declined  to  be  subjugated  by  the  pathetic  fallacy,  and  sent  back  a  matter-of-fact 
epitaph  for  John  Hewet  and  Sarah  Drew,  which,  though  it  wound  up  with  a 
compliment  to  her  correspondent,  can  hardly  have  gratified  him.  But  there  is 
one  letter  of  this  time  the  sincerity  of  which  is  undoubted.  It  is  Pope's  an- 
nouncement to  Martha  Blount  of  his  father's  death.  "  My  poor  Father  dyed  last 
night,"  it  says.  "  Believe,  since  I  don't  forget  you  this  moment,  I  never  shall. 
A.  Pope."  The  antithetical  touch  shows  how  art  had  become  a  second  nature 
with  the  writer  ;  but  his  attachment  and  devotion  to  his  parents  is  not  one  of  the 
disputed  points  in  his  story. 

Alexander  Pope  the  elder  died  in  October,  171  7.  Not  very  long  after,  tne 
poet  moved  with  his  mother  to  a  little  villa,  or  "  villakin  "  as  Swift  called  it,  on 
the  banks  of  the  Thames  at  Twickenham,  close  to  the  grotesque  Gothic  jumble 
known  as  Radnor  House.  At  Twickenham  or,  as  he  called  it,  "Twitnam," 
Pope  continued  to  reside  until  his  death,  his  permanent  house-mates  being  his 
old  nurse,  Mary  Beach,  to  whom  there  is  a  tablet  on  the  outer  wall  of  Twicken- 
ham Church,  and  his  mother,  who  survived  her  husband  until  i  733,  only  preced- 
ing her  famous  son  by  eleven  years.  Pope  tended  her  with  exemplary  care — a 
care  rendered  daily  more  imperative  by  her  increasing  infirmities.  Many  refer- 
ences to  her  occur  in  his  correspondence,  and  the  sedulous  inquiries  made  by  his 
friends  as  to  her  health  are  earnest  of  her  son's  unwearied  solicitude.  One  or 
two  of  the  old  lady's  simple,  homely  letters  to  him  have  been  preserved,  with 
their  fond  messages  and  faulty  spelling.  Now  and  then,  it  is  recorded,  he  would 
gratify  her  by  setting  her  to  transcribe  his  "  Homer,"  an  assistance  of  which  the 
advantages  must  have  been  debatable. 

Many  friends  came  and  went  at  the  pleasant  little  villa  by  the  Thames, 
"  flanked  by  ics  two  Courts  "  of  Hampton  and  Kew,  and  often,  no  doubt,  the 
London  stage,  '".tarting  from  the  Chequers  in  Piccadilly,  brought  to  it  guests 
bearing  names  familiar  in  the  annals  of  the  time.  There  are  three  of  his  inti- 
mates who  cannot  be  neglected  in  any  record,  however  brief.  When  Lady  Mary 
came  back  to  England  she  took  up  her  residence  at  Twickenham,  and  the  hith- 
erto epistolary  adoration  of  the  poet  became  a  practical  fact.  According  to  a 
story  popularized  by  the  pencil  of  Frith,  Pope  at  length  so  far  forgot  himself 
as  to  make  a  declaration  in  form,  to  which  she  returned  no  reply  but  that  most 
exasperating  of  all  replies,  ungovernable  laughter.  Whether  this  tradition  be 
true  or  not,  it  is  plain  that  she  seems  always  to  have  remembered  their  difference 


ALEXANDER   POPE  89 

of  rank,  and  to  have  been  rather  cold  than  encouraging.  The  issue  of  the 
acquaintance  is  a  sorry  one.  Pope  revenged  himself  for  her  scorn  in  his  worst 
and  most  unmanly  fashion  of  innuendo  ;  she,  on  her  side,  retorted  with  lampoons 
and  satire  as  cruel.  One  feels  glad  that  she  finally  left  England  and  that  further 
bickering  was  impossible.  The  other  two  persons  were  the  already  mentioned 
Blounts,  each  of  whom  seems  at  first  to  have  by  turn 

"  — blossomed  in  the  light 
Of  tender  personal  regards  ;  " 

Teresa,  the  elder  and  handsomer,  becoming  by  degrees  the  acknowledged  favor- 
ite. But  whether,  like  the  lover  in  Prior's  song,  Pope  "  convey'd  his  treasure  in 
a  borrowed  name,"  or  merely  changed  his  mind,  it  is  certain  that,  at  a  later  pe- 
riod, the  younger,  Martha,  had  proved  the  "  real  flame,"  to  the  permanent  dis- 
placement of  her  sister.  As  time  went  on.  Pope's  attachment  for  Martha 
Blount  continued  to  increase  until  she  became  almost  an  inmate  of  his  house. 
For  more  than  fifteen  years,  he  told  Gay  in  1 730,  he  had  spent  three  or  four 
hours  a  day  in  her  company ;  and  he  seems  to  have  loved  her  with  an  affection  as 
genuine  and  as  watchful  as  that  which  he  showed  to  his  parents.  Like  all  his 
connections,  this,  too,  was  marred  by  strange  pettinesses  and  curious  contradic- 
tions ;  but  one  can  scarcely  grudge  to  his  sickly  sensitive  nature  the  anodyne  of 
feminine  sympathy.  Why  so  close  and  tender  a  friendship  never  ripened  into 
marriage  is  an  inquiry  that  may  be  consigned  to  the  limbo  of  questions  insoluble. 
It  is  enough  that  in  the  checkered  chronicle  of  the  loves  of  the  poets,  "  blue- 
eyed  Patty  Blount  "  has  an  immortality  almost  as  secure  as  that  of  Esther  Johnson. 
To  return  to  Pope's  works.  In  the  first  years  of  his  Twickenham  residence 
the  "  Iliad"  was  finished  triumphantly,  and  Pope  was  invited  by  the  booksellers 
to  edit  Shakespeare.  The  task  was  one  for  which  he  had  few  qualifications,  and 
his  execution  of  it  at  once  laid  him  open  to  a  new  attack  from  a  fresh  opponent, 
Lewis  Theobald,  afterward  the  Tibbald  of  the  "  Dunciad  "  and  the  "  Satires." 
Then  he  followed  up  the  "  Iliad"  by  the  "Odyssey,"  in  which  he  was  assisted  by 
Fenton  and  Broome.  Toward  1725  Bolingbroke  settled  at  Dawley,  and  in  the 
succeeding  year  Swift  paid  a  long  visit  to  Pope  at  Twickenham.  These  two  fn- 
fluences  may  be  traced  in  most  of  Pope's  remaining  works.  In  1726,  "Gulli- 
ver's Travels"  saw  the  light,  and  in  1727  were  issued  those  joint  volumes  of 
"  Miscellanies  "  which  contained  the  "Treatise  on  the  Bathos,"  a  prose  satire,  to 
be  supplanted  in  brief  space  by  the  terrible  "Dunciad."  In  this  last.  Pope  en- 
tered upon  a  campaign  against  the  smaller  fry  of  the  pen  with  a  vigor,  a  deadly 
earnestness,  and  a  determination  to  wound,  unparalleled  in  tiic  history  of  letters. 
One  of  the  most  gifted  of  his  critics,  the  late  Rector  of  Lincoln  College,  speaks 
of  the  "Dunciad"  roundly  as  "an  amalgam  of  dirt,  ribaldry,  and  petty  spite," 
and  M.  Taine  brought  against  it  the  more  fatal  charge  of  tediousness.  But  even 
if  one  admits  the  indiscriminate  nature  of  that  onslaught  which  confuses  Bentley 
with  such  creatures  of  a  day  as  Rali)h  and  Oldmixon,  it  is  impossible  not  to  ad- 


90       ,  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

mire  the  surpassing  skill  of  the  measure  ;  and  it  is  probable  that,  in  spite  of  the 
"higher  criticism,"  the  "  Dunciad,"  swarming  as  it  does  with  contemporary  allu- 
sions, will  continue  to  hold  its  own  with  the  antiquary  and  the  literary  historian, 
though  it  has  ceased  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  desirable  masterpieces  of  its 
class. 

If  Swift,  who  encouraged  Pope  in  his  war  against  Dulness,  must  be  held  to 
be  indirectly  responsible  for  the  attack  upon  its  strongholds,  it  was  Bolingbroke 
who  suggested  the  once  popular  epistles  which  Pope  dedicated  to  him  under  the 
title  of  the  "  Essay  on  Man,"  a  work  which  has  this  in  common  with  the  earlier 
"  Essay  on  Criticism,"  that  it  is  a  versification  of  a  given  theme.  But  Pope  under- 
stood the  precepts  of  Rapin  and  Bossu  better  than  the  precepts  of  Leibnitz  and 
St.  John,  and  the  "  Essay  on  Man,"  bristling  as  it  does  with  axiomatic  felicities 
and  "  jewels  five  words  long,"  has  long  been  discredited  as  a  philosophical  trea- 
tise. It  is  to  another  hint  from  the  sage  of  Dawley  that  we  owe  its  author's 
most  individual  work.  A  chance  remark  of  Bolingbroke  set  him  upon  the  imi- 
tations of  Horace  that  grew  into  the  "  Satires  and  Epistles."  In  these  and  the 
cognate  "  Moral  Essays,"  which  belong  to  his  ripest  period  of  production.  Pope's 
unmatched  mastery  over  heroics,  perfected  by  the  long  probation  of  his  Homeric 
translations,  and  his  equally  unrivalled  powers  of  satire,  let  loose  and  emboldened 
by  the  brutalities  of  the  "  Dunciad,"  found  their  fitting  field.  Aimed  at  the  old 
eternal  vices  and  frailties  of  humanity,  they  assail  them  with  a  pungency,  a  force, 
a  wit,  and  a  directness  which,  in  English  verse,  have  no  parallel.  Indeed  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  the  portraits  of  Bufo  and  Sporus,  of  Atossa  and  Atticus, 
have  been  excelled  in  any  language  whatsoever. 

The  first  of  the  Dialogues  known  as  the  "  Epilogue  to  the  Satires"  was 
published  in  1738,  on  the  same  morning  as  Johnson^s  "London,"  thus  (in  Bos- 
well's  view)  providing  England  simultaneously  with  its  Horace  and  its  Juvenal. 
The  second  part  followed  in  the  same  year.  Besides  these  there  is  little  which  is 
material  to  be  added  to  the  record  of  Pope's  work  but  the  revised  "  Dunciad,"  in 
which,  to  gratify  an  increased  antipathy,  he  displaced  its  old  hero,  Theobald,  in 
favor  of  Colley  Gibber,  who,  whatever  his  faults,  was  certainly  not  a  typical  dunce. 
Toward  the  close  of  his  life  those  infirmities  at  which  Wycherley  had  hinted  in 
his  youth  grew  upon  him,  and  he  became  almost  entirely  dependent  upon  nurses. 
He  had  not,  to  use  De  Ouincey's  words,  drawn  that  supreme  prize  in  life,  "a 
fine  intellect  with  a  healthy  stomach,"  and  his  whole  story  testifies  to  that  fact. 
As  years  went  on  his  little  figure,  in  its  rusty  black,  was  seen  more  rarely  in  the 
Twickenham  lanes,  and  if  he  took  the  air  upon  the  Thames,  it  was  in  a  sedan- 
chair  that  was  lifted  into  a  boat.  When  he  visited  his  friends  his  sleeplessness 
and  his  multiplied  needs  tired  out  the  servants ;  while  in  the  day-time  he  would 
nod  in  company,  even  though  the  Prince  of  Wales  was  talking  of  poetry.  He 
was  a  martyr  to  sick  headaches,  and  in  the  intervals  of  relief  from  them  would 
be  tormented  by  all  sorts  of  morbid  cravings  for  the  very  dietary  which  must  in- 
evitably secure  their  recurrence.  This  continued  battle  of  the  brain  with  the  ig- 
nobler  organs  goes  far  to  explain,  if  it  may  not  excuse,  much  of  the  less  admira- 


ALEXANDER   POPE  91 

ble  side  of  his  character.  His  irritability,  his  artifice,  his  meannesses  even,  are 
more  intelligible  in  the  case  of  a  man  habitually  racked  with  pain,  and  morbidly 
conscious  of  his  physical  shortcomings,  than  they  would  be  in  the  case  of  those 
"  whom  God  has  made  full-limbed  and  tall ;  "  and,  in  the  noble  teaching  of  Ar- 
thur's court,  his  infirmities  should  entitle  him  to  a  larger  charity  of  judgment. 

Nothing  in  his  life  is  more  touching  than  the  account  of  his  last  days,  when 
he  lay  wasted  with  an  intolerable  asthma,  waiting  serenely  for  the  end,  but  full  of 
kindness  and  tender  thoughtfulness  for  the  friends  who  came  and  went  about  his 
bed.  Bolingbroke  was  often  there  from  Battersea,  stirred  to  philosophic  utter- 
ances and  unphilosophic  tears,  and  grave  Lyttleton,  and  kind  Lord  Marchmont, 
and  faithful  Joseph  Spence.  Martha  Blount,  too,  was  not  absent,  and  "it  was 
very  observable,"  said  the  spectators,  how  the  sick  man's  strength  and  spirits 
seemed  to  revive  at  the  approach  of  his  favorite.  "  Here  I  am  dving  of  a  hun- 
dred good  symptoms,"  he  said  to  one  of  his  visitors.  What  humiliated  him  most 
was  his  inability  to  think.  "  One  of  the  things  that  I  have  always  most  won- 
dered at  (he  told  Spence)  is  that  there  should  be  any  such  thing  as  human  vanity. 
If  I  had  any,  I  had  enough  to  mortify  it  a  few  days  ago,  for  I  lost  my  mind  for 
a  whole  day."  A  little  later  Spence  is  telling  Bolingbroke  how,  "  on  every 
catching  and  recovering  of  his  mind,"  Pope  is  "always  saying  something  kind 
either  of  his  present  or  absent  friends,"  and  that  it  seems  "  as  if  his  humanity  had 
outlived  his  understanding."  But  the  vital  spark  still  continued  to  flicker  in  its 
socket,  and  only  a  da)'  or  two  before  his  death  he  sat  for  three  whole  hours  in  his 
sedan-chair,  in  the  garden  he  loved  so  well,  then  filled  with  the  blossoms  of  May 
and  smelling  of  the  summer  he  was  not  to  see.  On  the  29th  he  took  an  airing 
in  Bushv  Park,  and  a  little  later  received  the  sacrament.  On  the  evening  of  the 
following  day  he  passed  away  so  softly  and  painlessly  that  those  who  stood  by 
knew  not  "  the  exact  time  of  his  departure."  He  had  lived  fifty-six  years  and 
nine  days,  and  he  was  buried  near  to  the  monument  of  his  father  in  the  chancel 
of  Twickenham  Church.  Seventeen  years  afterward  Bishop  Warburton  erected 
a  tablet  to  him  in  the  same  building,  with  an  epitaph  as  idle  as  that  which  dis- 
graces the  tomb  of  Gay  in  Westminster  Abbey.  It  is  possible  that  Pope  may  at 
some  time  have  written  it,  but  the  terms  of  his  will  prove  conclusively  that  he 
never  intended  it  to  be  used. 

What  is  Pope's  position  as  a  poet  ?  Time,  that  great  practitioner  of  the  ex- 
haustive process,  "  sifting  alway,  sifting  ever,"  even  to  the  point  of  annihilation, 
has  already  half  answered  the  question.  No  one  now,  except  the  literary  his- 
torian or  the  student  of  versification,  is  ever  likely  to  consult  the  "  Pastorals''  or 
"  Windsor  Forest  ;  "  and  men  will,  in  all  probability,  continue  to  quote  "  Hope 
springs  eternal  in  the  human  breast  "  and  "  A  little  learning  is  a  dangerous 
thing,"  without  the  least  suspicion  that  the  one  comes  from  the  seldom-read  "  Es- 
say on  Criticism"  and  the  other  from  the  equally  seldom-read  "Essay  on  Man." 
Here  and  there  a  professor  like  the  late  Professor  Conington  will  praise  the  "  un- 
hasting  unresting  flow  "  of  the  translations  from  Homer  ;  but  the  next  generation 
will  read  its  "  Iliad  "  in  the  Greek,  or  in  some  future  successor  to  Mr.  William 


92 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


Morris  or  Mr.  Way.  Few  now  re-echo  the  praises  which  the  critics  of  fifty  years 
ago  gave  to  the  "  Elegy  on  an  Unfortunate  Lady  "  and  "  Eloisa  to  Abelard  ;  "  nor 
do  any  but  the  habitual  pilgrims  of  the  by-ways  of  literature  devote  their  seri- 
ous attention  to  the  different  versions  of  the  "  Dunciad."  But  there  is  no  reason 
why  the  "  Rape  of  the  Lock  "  should  not  find  as  many  admirers  a  hundred  years 
hence  as  it  does  to-day,  or  why — so  long  as  men  remember  the  poems  of  the 
friend  of  Maecenas — the  "  Satires  and  Epistles  "  should  fail  of  an  audience.  In 
these  Pope's  verse  is  as  perfect  as  it  is  anywhere  ;  and  his  subject  is  borrowed, 
not  from  his  commonplace  book,  but  from  his  own  experiences.  He  wants,  it  is 
true,  the  careless^  ease,  the  variety,  the  unemphatic  grace  of  the  Roman  writer. 
But  he  has  many  of  the  qualities  of  his  master  ;  and  it  is  probable  that  only  when 
men  weary  of  hearing  how  Horace  strolled  down  the  Sacred  Way  and  met  an  in- 
tolerable Bore — only  then,  or  perhaps  a  little  earlier,  will  they  cease  to  hearken 
how  Alexander  Pope  bade  John  Searle  bar  the  door  at  Twickenham  against  the 
combined  inroad  of  Bedlam  and  Parnassus. 


VOLTAIRE* 

By  M.  C.  Lockwood,  D.D. 
(1694- 1  778) 


IN  order  to  justly  estimate  the  life,  charac- 
ter, and  genius  of  a  man  it  is  necessary 
to  possess  some  knowledge  of  the  environ- 
ments and  heredity  which  generated  him. 
Any  study  of  Voltaire  which  ignores  these 
influences  will  fail  not  onlv  in  doing  him 
justice,  but  in  comprehending  his  unique 
and  exceptional  place  in  history.  The  most 
careful  examination  of  these,  together  with 
the  voluminous  bibliography  relating  to 
Voltaire  provided  bv  French,  German,  and 
English  literature,  still  will  leave  him  some- 
thing of  an  enigma. 

The  stage  properties  and  scenery  were 
prepared  for  the  great  Frenchman  long  before  he  appeared,  as  is  always  the  case 
with  the  famous  actors  in  the  drama  of  history.     The  time  in  which  he  was  born 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selniar  Hess. 


VOLTAIRE  93 

was  that  of  Louis  XIV.,  king  by  divine  right,  whose  history  is  that  of  one  who 
was  more  the  tinsel-robed  actor,  strutting  in  the  semblance  of  royalty,  and  less 
the  king  than  many 

"  A  poor  player 
Who  struts  and  frets  his  hour  upon  the  stage, 
And  then  is  heard  no  more." 

Louis  XIV.  wore  all  the  outward  guise  of  regal  office,  in  his  bearing,  polite- 
ness, address,  magnificence,  and  high-heeled  dignity,  but  he  was  sensual,  ferocious, 
ignorant,  profligate,  and  superstitious.  His  greatness  was  fictitious,  his  splendor 
superficial,  and  his  character  false.  The  king  was  the  state,  but  his  mistresses 
governed.  A  court  thus  constituted  led  the  fashions  and  formed  the  manners  of 
the  people.  It  stamped  the  age  with  that  type  of  character  which  belongs  to 
the  adventurer  and  devotee.  The  splendors  of  the  court  were  maintained  at  the 
expense  of  the  people.  The  glory  of  Versailles  rose  above  the  darkness  of  the 
nation.  The  voluptuous  and  luxurious  pleasures  of  the  nobility  were  the  measure 
of  the  poverty  and  suffering  of  the  people.  The  aristocracy  enjoyed  life  as  if  it 
were  a  prolonged  comedy,  while  the  nation  was  moving  toward  the  enactment  of 
its  greatest  tragedy. 

Religion  was  reduced  to  superstition,  theology  was  divorced  from  ethics,  ritual 
performances  were  substituted  for  moral  obligations,  and  zeal  for  God  manifested 
by  cruelty  to  man — conditions  which  are  invariably  concomitant  in  religious  his- 
tory. The  Mephistopheles  evoked  by  the  German  Reformation  was  abroad,  and 
had  announced  himself  to  others  besides  Dr.  Faustus,  saying,  "  I  am  the  Spirit 
who  denies."  Freedom  of  thought  involves  a  liberty  to  think  wrongly  as  well 
as  rightly.  Technical  learning,  in  possession  of  the  Jesuits,  might  content  a  re- 
ligious devotee  ;  but  philosophy  and  the  new  science  opened  paths  which  led  away 
from  traditions  and  authoritative  decretals  ;  paths  which  neither  priest  nor  king 
could  close,  for  they  followed  the  stars  in  their  courses.  The  waymarks  had  been 
blazed  by  the  genius  of  Galileo  and  Copernicus.  Those  who  dared  to  venture 
into  this  new  territory  found  institutions  and  systems  of  theology  arrayed  against 
them,  armed  with  the  power  of  present  persecution,  more  to  be  feared  than 
threats  of  future  damnation.  Public  life  was  venal,  the  Church  simoniacal,  and 
society  licentious.      In  such  an  age  Voltaire  was  born. 

The  family  of  Arouet  was  ancient  and  respectable,  representing  the  middle 
class  of  society.  Voltaire's  grandfather  settled  in  early  life  in  Paris,  and  retired 
on  a  comfortable  fortune  made  by  selling  cloth.  His  father,  Francois  Arouet, 
was  a  successful  notary  of  Paris,  an  honorable  profession,  which  included  all  that 
is  now  done  among  us  by  lawyers,  brokers,  life-insurers,  and  administrators  of  es- 
tates. Many  of  the  characteristics  which  we  discover  in  his  father,  and,  indeed, 
in  all  the  Arouets,  survive  in  Voltaire.  They  are  vivacity,  thrift,  irritability,  and 
withal  a  pleasing  and  generous  disposition. 

Frangois  Marie  Arouet  was  the  youngest  child  of  a  too  prolific  mother.  He 
was  born  November  21,  1694,  a  weakly,  feeble  babe  whose  life  was  despaired  of 


94  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

during  the  first  year.  The  child  was  abandoned  to  the  care  of  a  nurse,  his  mother 
being  an  invalid.  She  died  when  he  reached  the  age  of  seven.  By  the  time  the 
infant  was  two  years  old  he  began  to  thrive,  and  grew  into  an  active,  healthy 
child.  Not  robust,  he  was,  nevertheless,  wiry,  and  endowed  with  nervous 
energy. 

His  earliest  instruction  was  from  the  Abbe  de  Chateauneuf,  who  tausfht  him 
belles  lettres  and  deism.  At  a  very  early  age  the  little  lad  exhibited  a  precocious 
talent  for  versification.  When  ten  years  old  he  was  sent  to  the  College  Louis- 
le-Grand.  Here  he  remained  until  he  was  seventeen,  receiving  an  education 
which,  though  always  depreciated  by  him,  provided  the  basis  of  a  wide  and  varied 
knowledge.  The  Jesuits,  who  were  the  instructors  at  this  college,  retained  the 
methods  of  the  schools  of  the  Renaissance,  in  which  plays  in  Latin  and  French 
were  enacted  by  the  scholars.  This  may  explain  his  lifelong  devotion  to  the 
drama. 

His  remarkable  poetic  talent  led  to  an  introduction,  when  he  was  but  eleven 
years  old,  to  Ninon  de  I'Enclos,  who,  in  her  nineteenth  year,  was  the  leader  of  a 
brilliant  coterie  of  society.  This  unaccountable  and  marvellous  woman  was  so 
pleased  with  the  lad  that  she  left  him  a  legacy  of  two  thousand  livres  "  to  buy 
books  with." 

When  his  college  days  were  ended  his  troubles  began.  His  father  had  deter- 
mined to  make  him  a  notary.  The  youth  wanted  to  follow  literature,  which  the 
father  regarded  as  equal  to  no  profession  at  all.  The  father  triumphed  in  so  far 
as  securing  the  young  man's  consent  to  begin  the  study  of  law.  He  began  but 
never  proceeded,  and  gave  himself  to  everything  but  the  pursuit  of  legal  lore. 
The  Abb^  de  Chateauneuf,  the  godfather  of  Voltaire,  died  before  the  boy's  col- 
lege days  were  over,  but  before  his  death  he  introduced  his  pupil  to  the  celebrated 
society  of  the  Epicureans  of  the  Temple.  Here  the  youth  gathered  the  vast  mass 
of  historical  gossip  which  served  him  so  well  in  later  years.  His  father  was  dis- 
gusted with  his  son's  pursuits,  and,  alarmed  at  his  association  with  princes  and 
philosophers,  he  sent  him  away  to  the  ancient  Norman  city  of  Caen.  This  did 
not  effect  a  cure.  The  notary  sent  word  to  his  son  that  if  he  would  settle  down 
and  finish  his  studies  he  would  purchase  for  him  a  commission  as  counsellor  to 
the  Parliament  of  Paris.  "  Tell  my  father,"  he  answered,  "  that  I  do  not  desire 
any  place  which  can  be  bought.  I  shall  know  how  to  make  one  for  myself  that 
will  cost  nothing." 

Voltaire  had  a  brother,  named  Armand,  who  was  a  Jansenist  and  bigot. 
Their  father  commented  on  his  two  sons  by  saying,  "  I  have  a  pair  of  fools  for 
sons,  one  in  verse  and  the  other  in  prose." 

In  the  year  1713  the  Marquis  de  Chateauneuf,  a  brother  of  the  Abb^,  ap-. 
pointed  Voltaire  to  the  ofiftce  of  page  in  his  diplomatic  corps.  The  marquis  was 
Ambassador  to  The  Hague.  Here  the  young  man  fell  desperately  in  love  with 
Olympe  Dunoyer,  a  young  woman  about  twenty-one  years  of  age,  and  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  woman  who  had  separated  from  her  husband,  and  supported  herself  by 
writing  disreputable  scandal  and  gossip.     This  love  affair  was  violently  opposed 


VOLTAIRE  95 

by  the  mother  and  resulted  in  the  young  man's  being  sent  back  to  Paris.  For 
a  brief  time  he  gladdened  the  heart  of  his  father  by  resuming  the  study  of  law, 
but  soon  manifested  his  peculiar  facility  for  getting  into  trouble. 

Defeated  in  securing  an  award  from  the  French  Academy  for  a  poem,  he 
turned  his  wit  against  the  successful  candidate,  and  also  the  poet  La  Motte,  who 
had  decided  the  competition.  A  large  part  of  his  attack  was  harmless  fun,  but 
a  short  and  very  savage  satire  aimed  at  La  Motte  was  dangerous  to  its  author, 
so  his  father  was  glad  of  the  opportunity  to  send  his  scapegrace  to  the  Chateau 
de  St.  Ange,  in  company  with  De  Camartin,  nephew  of  the  Marquis  de  Saint  Ange. 
The  old  marquis  was  a  just  and  brilliant  magistrate,  a  man  familiar  with  the  his- 
tory of  France,  and  who  knew  the  genealogies  of  the  French  court,  and  all 
the  rare  anecdotes  of  the  period  included  by  the  reigns  of  Henry  IV.  and  Louis 
XIV.     That  Voltaire  improved  these  days  at  St.  Ange  is  undoubted. 

He  returned  to  Paris  at  the  time  of  the  death  of  the  king.  This  time  he  was 
admitted  to  the  famous  "  court  of  Sceaux,"  over  which  reigned  the  brilliant 
Duchcsse  du  Maine.  It  is  charged  that  he  assisted  the  duchess  in  composing 
lampoons  on  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  then  Prince  Regent.  Accused  of  writing  two 
libels,  he  was  arrested.  May  i6,  171 7,  and  sent  to  th.  Bastile,  in  which  prison  he 
spent  eleven  months.  While  here  he  gave  himself  to  serious  literary  labor.  At 
this  time  he  changed  his  name,  and  was  henceforth  known  as  Arouet  de  Vol- 
taire.    The  origin  of  the  new  name  is  one  of  the  disputed  problems  of  biography. 

Released  from  the  Bastile,  he  was,  according  to  custom,  ordered  into  exile, 
being  permitted  to  go  to  a  place  owned  by  his  father  in  the  village  of  Chatenay. 
In  October,  1718,  he  was  permitted  formally  to  return  to  Paris.  In  the  spring 
of  the  following  year  he  was  suspected  of  having  written  the  "  Philippiques,"  and 
was  banished  informally  from  Paris.  Most  of  this  period  he  spent  with  Marshal 
V'illars,  and  gathered  more  of  those  reminiscences,  which  he  used  with  so  much 
skill  later  in  his  career,  besides  making  harmless  love  to  the  duchess,  the  wife  of 
his  host.  In  1721  his  father  died,  leaving  him  an  income  of  about  four  thou- 
sand livres  a  year,  and  this  was  further  increased  by  a  pension  of  two  thousand 
livres  a  year  from  the  Regent  in  recognition  of  his  ability  as  a  dramatic  writer. 

Several  years  were  spent  in  Paris  in  literary  labors  and  in  acquiring  powerful 
friends  and  more  powerful  enemies  ;  among  the  latter  was  the  Chevalier  de  Ro- 
han, who  insulted  Voltaire  on  different  occasions,  which  led  to  sharp  replies  from 
the  caustic  youth.  The  chevalier  hired  some  roughs  to  give  him  a  caning.  \"ol- 
taire  could  get  no  one  to  take  his  part,  so  he  challenged  the  chevalier  to  a  duel. 
The  challenge  was  accepted,  but  on  the  morning  of  the  day  appointed  for  the 
meeting  the  Government  interfered  by  kindly  arresting  Voltaire  and  putting  him 
again  in  tne  Bastile. 

After  fifteen  days  of  imprisonment  he  was  released  on  condition  that  he  would 
go  to  England.  The  chief  turnkey  of  the  Bastile  was  instructed  to  go  as  far  as 
Calais  with  the  troublesome  prisoner,  in  order  to  be  sure  that  he  was  forwarded 
to  his  destination.  Nothing  in  Voltaire's  history  did  more  to  form  his  career 
than  his  visit  to  England.      He  made  a  good  deal  of  money  there,  and  it  is  said. 


96  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

laid  the  foundations  of  his  fortune.  He  formed  acquaintances  among  the  fore- 
most literary  men  of  that  nation,  such  as  the  Walpoles,  Bubb  Doddington, 
Bolingbroke,  Congreve,  Sir  Everard  Falkener,  and  the  poet  Pope.  The  effect 
of  these  associations  in  the  literary  career  of  Voltaire  is  marked.  They  deep- 
ened and  broadened  his  mind,  and  reduced  the  flippancy  of  method,  which  is  the 
bane  of  French  literature,  to  its  minimum. 

He  suffered  an  exile  of  three  years,  a  long  term  for  the  offence  he  had  com- 
mitted. In  1729  he  was  permitted  to  return  to  Paris.  That  year,  by  a  lottery 
speculation,  in  which  he  was  a  sure  winner,  he  secured  enough  money,  when 
added  to  what  he  already  possessed,  to  render  him  independent  of  all  patronage. 
From  this  time  on  he  never  knew  the  want  of  money,  nor  permitted  an  oppor- 
tunity to  pass  by  which  he  could  increase  his  riches. 

The  next  few  years  were  mainly  devoted  to  the  production  of  poems,  plays, 
and  English  letters.  During  these  years  his  pen  continually  brought  him  into 
difficulty.  Some  of  his  productions  he  denied.  At  last,  in  i  734,  when  a  pirated 
edition  of  his  English  letters  appeared,  containing  also  a  criticism  upon  the  fanat- 
icism of  the  saintly  Pascal,  full  of  heresy,  good  sense,  and  keen  satire,  the  fury  of 
the  storm  broke  upon  him  again.  A  warrant  was  immediately  issued  for  his  ar- 
rest ;  the  officer  charged  with  the  duty  of  capturing  him  found  that  Voltaire  had 
left  the  Chateau  at  Monjeau,  where  he  had  been  in  attendance  at  the  wedding  of 
the  Duke  de  Richelieu,  so  the  arrest  was  not  made. 

We  now  find  him  at  the  Chateau  of  Madame  du  Chatelet.  His  relations 
with  this  woman  will  not  bear  scrutiny.  The  most  charitable  construction  which 
can  be  put  upon  the  fifteen  years  during  which  Voltaire  lived  with  her  is,  that  she, 
like  himself,  was  morally  the  product  of  the  age.  If,  however,  it  is  urged  against 
them  that  there  were  pure  women  and  honorable  men  in  France  at  that  time, 
it  may  be  asserted  that  such  were  men  and  women  who  had  not  been  surrounded 
from  childhood  with  the  influences  and  social  customs  in  which  Voltaire  and 
Madame  du  Chatelet  lived,  moved,  and  had  their  being. 

When  this  woman  died  Voltaire  found  himself  in  a  very  unsettled  condi- 
tion. During  his  life  at  the  Chateau'  de  Cirey  he  had  received  letters  from  Prince 
Frederick  of  Prussia.  Now  the  prince  is  king,  and  he  asks  Voltaire  to  be  his 
guest,  and  find  with  him  a  refuge  and  a  home.  The  "respectable  Emily"  being 
dead,  Voltaire,  after  considerable  haggling  about  money  matters  with  Frederick, 
who  behaved  generously,  at  last  consented.  ^ 

In  the  year  1751  the  French  author  reached  Berlin.  Frederick  treated  him 
in  a  right  kingly  way.  From  the  very  first  Voltaire  behaved  like  a  marplot 
rather  than  as  the  guest  of  a  king.  Quarrel  succeeded  quarrel.  Most  of  his  em- 
broilments with  the  king  were  of  less  credit  to  Voltaire  than  to  Frederick.  The 
former  was  as  full  of  tricks  as  Puck,  and  impish  in  his  mischief.  Frederick  was 
overbearing  and  tyrannical.  Having  a  rude  sense  of  justice,  being  German,  he 
would  grant  no  license  to  the  stinging,  envious  satires  of  the  jealous,  envious 
Frenchman.  They  managed  to  get  on  with  each  other  for  about  three  years. 
Voltaire  disgusted   Frederick  by  getting   into  a  lawsuit  with  a  Jewish  banker. 


THE  AREEST  OF  VOLTAIRE  AND  HIS  NIECE  BY  FREDERICK'S  ORDER 

BT 

JUL^S  aiRARBET 


9G 


laid  the  foundation 
inpst  literary  men 
Boli^     '      '       ^' 

of  t' 
enc. 
banc  of 


rormetl 
ach    as  tht 
ru  Fall' 
.  ...ly  caret:      . 
and  reduced  the  flu 
re,  to  its  minimum. 

'    '    '  '         term 

...     , --     .         .-..-;:l    to    P:: 

le  was  a  sure  winner,  ht 

him  indcpemi 

:  :    of    n':  "  ^ 

.  ,._  'li?  rirh 


■p«:  among  the  fore- 

')b   Doddington, 

The  effect 

They  deep- 

which  is  the 


,ui,.i;ur- 


next  few  years  wc 


iiiui   English  letters, 


IS,  pjays, 
these  years  his,»pen  continually  brought  him  into 
difficulty.  Some  of  his  prouuctions  he  denied.  At  last,  in  i  734,  when  a  pirated 
edition  of  hi.^  En.olic.h  letter?  nrncarcd.  contnininfT-also  a  criticism  upon  the  fanat- 
icism of  thi  ase,  and  keen  satire,  the  fury  of 
the  n.  A  war  'r  his  ar- 
rest ;  li  m  the  duty  '  '  '  'id 
left  the  '  J  '.u,  where  h.  f 
the  Duke  de  Richelieu,  so  the 

We  p.(,\r  iind   ].•,:;       '  ...  .     -    ..  ,  e    ,i.is 

,    .  .aaaao  a'zoiaaaaai  Ya  aoam  am  qvla  acaiATJOv  10  Tgsraa^  ^iWh 

Ta  that  she, 

!  TaaHAHio  aaj'Ji  irged  against 

.   men  in  France  at  that  time, 

,MiM  M'.^neu  who  had  not  been  surrounded 


!i    iii.i\    I  le  .i>",ei  ' 

from  childhood 

Madame  du  Ch 

When  t! 


dead,  \  > 
who  be! Id.  > 
In  the  V 

:it  kinu' 


•id  ''nr-e,',  customs  in  which  Voltaire  and 

being. 
fuund  iuinsflf  in  a  very  unsettled  condi- 

,,:i  deC--  ■••'  -'■■  '  •■ ■'-'  ' '■ " 


prmce  i- 

md  a  home.  •  The 
■ling  about  mi 
:ited. 

r   rend' 


ing  and  tyrannical  ig  a  rude 

1  license  to   tlic  stinging,  e' 

'"■^'j;ed  to  get  on  \v  <; .. 
ick  by  getting  int 


'1 1  >  1  -  »"».\  n  I 


IS 

.eing 


'     ated  him 

c  a  marplot, 

■f  his  em- 

;k.     The 

rick  was 

German,  he 

ious,  envious 

.t  three  years. 

Jewish  banker. 


VOLTAIRE  97 

named  Hirsch  about  a  discreditable  speculation  in  Saxony  money.  Finally  he 
began  a  violent  controversy  with  Maupertuis,  president  of  the  Berlin  Academy. 
He  libelled  this  boorish  but  able  scholar,  who  held  his  office  by  appointment  of 
Frederick.  He  lied  to  the  king  concerning  one  of  the  most  cutting  satires  in 
literature,  which  was  aimed  at  the  president.  He  tricked  the  king  in  the  shab- 
biest manner.      He  had  succeeded  in  getting  into  difficulty  with  his  u<;ual  facility. 

He  asked  for  permission  to  leave  the  court  of  Frederick,  pleading  business  at 
Paris,  and  also  that  his  health  required  him  to  visit  Plombieres,  in  order  to  drink 
of  its  waters.  Frederick  gave  him  leave  to  go.  On  the  eve  of  going,  in  utter 
disregard  of  his  promise  to  the  king,  he  fired  a  parting  shot  at  Maupertuis,  in  the 
shape  of  a  supplement  to  the  attack  he  had  already  made,  then  travelled  leis- 
urely on  his  way.  Frederick  waited  until  he  reached  Frankfort  ;  there  he  was 
detained  by  order  of  the  king  on  the  charge  of  having  some  verses  written  by 
Frederick  in  his  possession.  The  resident  at  Frankfort  was  as  stupid  and 
clumsy  as  a  German  official  can  be,  and  managed  the  affair  in  a  most  rude  and 
indelicate  manner.  Exasperated  at  the  delay,  Voltaire  committed  the  folly  of 
undertaking  to  steal  away.  He  and  his  niece  were  arrested  and  imprisoned  in  an 
inn,  where  they  were  subjected  to  very  unpleasant  treatment.  The  action  of 
Frederick  was  unworthy  of  a  king.  Its  meanness  was  intensified  by  the  bun- 
gling stupidity  of  the  resident.  The  people  of  Frankfort  grew  indignant,  and  the 
burgomaster  began  to  show  resentment,  for  Frankfort  was  a  free  city  and  the 
King  of  Prussia  had  no  right  to  trespass  upon  its  privileges.  It  was  mean  in  a 
monarch  to  strike  this  foul  blow  because  he  had  been  pricked  with  a  sharp  pin. 

From  this  time  forth  Voltaire  entered  upon  a  life  of  complete  independence, 
free  from  all  incumbrances  of  mistresses,  royal  patrons,  or  aristocratic  friends. 
He  tried  residence  in  Geneva  and  Lausanne,  but  while  he  found  political  liberty, 
he  was  not  accorded  by  the  pious  Swiss  the  social  freedom  to  which  he  was  ac- 
customed in  France.  Finally  he  purchased  a  place  at  Ferney.  His  home  here 
became  the  Mecca  to  which  the  literary  celebrities  of  Europe  made  pilgrimages. 
At  Ferney  he  established  watch-manufacturing,  competing  with  the  Swiss ;  here 
also  he  built  a  church,  inscribing  upon  it  "  Deo  crcxit  Voltaire."  In  pure 
mischievousncss  he  entered  upon  an  indecent  controversy  with  the  bishop  of 
the  diocese,  who  was  a  good  though  foolish  man.  He  also  managed  to  quarrel 
right  and  left  with  all  sorts  of  people,  while  slowly  and  imperceptibly  old  age 
crept  upon  him.  Much  of  the  noblest  work  of  his  life  was  done  here.  It  was 
while  at  Ferney  that  he  adopted  a  young  girl  of  noble  but  poor  family,  rescuing 
her  from  a  convent  and  marrying  her  to  the  Marquis  de  Villete.  She  contrib- 
uted to  making  many  of  his  declining  years  bright  with  her  presence.  His  pet 
name  for  her  was  "  Belle  et  Bonne." 

For  some  of  his  work  done  at  Ferney  he  has  won  the  respect  and  admiration 
of  mankind.  Such  were  his  n()l)lc  defence  of  the  Galas  family,  his  successful 
attack  upon  the  outrages  committed  upon  Sirvcn  and  his  family,  securing  the  lib- 
eration of  Espinassc  from  the  galleys,  the  vindication  of  General  Lally,  and  the 
brave  battle  for  D'Etalonde  and  La  Barre,  together  with  many  other  cases  in 

7 


98  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

which  his  powerful  pen  proved  its  strength  in  defence  of  the  weak  against  the 
oppression  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical  tyranny. 

This  part  of  his  career  provides  the  staple  material  for  his  eulogists,  as  it  is 
not  without  genuine  value.  With  the  death  of  Louis  XV.,  Voltaire  evidently 
expected  that  he  would  be  invited  to  return  to  Paris,  but  the  government  did 
not  give  him  any  encouragement.  By  the  beginning  of  1778  he  had  finished  a 
tragedy  entitled  "  Irene,"  and  on  February  loth  he  arrived  in  Paris  after  an  ab- 
sence of  twenty-eight  years.  Though  not  received  very  cordially  by  the  minis- 
try, he  was  heartily  welcomed  by  the  Academy  and  all  the  foreign  celebrities  at 
the  capital,  among  them  the  American  minister,  Dr.  Benjamin  Franklin,  to 
whom  he  said  :  "  If  I  were  only  forty  years  old  I  would  immediately  go  and  set- 
tle in  your  happy  country."  An  hour  after  Franklin  left,  the  English  ambassa- 
dor called,  to  whom  he  made  himself  equally  agreeable. 

The  prolonged  excitement  of  the  continuous  attention  paid  him,  at  last 
brought  on  a  severe  illness.  In  order  to  secure  the  right  of  burial  in  consecrated 
ground  he  professed  conversion.  Recovering  temporarily,  he  scofTed  at  himself, 
saying,  "  It  is  necessary  for  a  man  to  die  in  the  religion  of  his  fathers.  If  I  lived 
on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges  I  should  wish  to  die  with  a  cow's  tail  in  my  hand." 
Before  he  died  his  secretary,  Wagniere,  entreated  him  to  state  precisely  his  "  way 
of  thinking "  concerning  religion.  Voltaire  asked  for  paper  and  ink  and  then 
wrote  and  signed  the  following,  which  is  now  to  be  seen  in  the  National  Library 
at  Paris:  "I  die  adoring  God,  loving  my  friends,  not  hating  my  enemies,  and 
detesting  superstition.     Feb.  28th,  1778.     Voltaire." 

His  play  "  Irene  "  was  first  giv^en  on  March  i6th.  By  the  30th  of  the  month  he 
was  able  to  attend,  and  that  night,  in  the  theatre,  received  an  ovation  unequalled 
in  history.  Shortly  after,  his  illness  returned,  in  which  he  lingered  until  May  30, 
1778,  dying  at  the  age  of  eighty-three  years  and  six  months.  There  was  difficulty 
in  securing  a  permit  for  his  burial,  and  not  until  1791  did  his  body  find  a  resting- 
place  in  the  Pantheon. 

As  a  dramatist  he  ranks  next  to  Racine  and  Corneille,  but  as  an  epic  poet  he 
is  a  failure.  His  romances  are  probably  the  best  evidences  of  his  versatile 
and  wonderful  powers.  They  embody  all  the  hate  and  really  noble  anger  of  his 
soul  against  the  evils  which  were  crushing  the  life  of  the  French  people.  Their 
wit  never  fails,  and  they  flash  and  sparkle  with  his  matchless  brilliancy  of  satire. 
As  a  writer  of  history  he  has  never  been  regarded  as  possessing  very  great  merit, 
for  two  reasons :  First,  he  was  totally  lacking  in  any  grasp  of  the  philosophy 
of  history  ;  second,  he  was  not  careful  as  to  accuracy  in  stating  facts.  His 
philosophical  works  are  largely  covert  attacks  upon  the  religious  and  ecclesi- 
astical systems  of  his  day.  These  are  interesting  reading  matter  if  one  does  not 
regard  the  absurdity  of  any  permanent  claims  to  physics  or  metaphysics  which 
they  contain. 

His  criticisms  and  miscellaneous  works  reveal  all  the  characteristics  of  his 
other  writings — pungent,  witty,  sharp  ;  indicating,  however,  more  of  the  skill  of 
the  journalist  than  of  the  great  author.      He  has  not  left  a  single  line  which  em- 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON 


99 


bodies  a  great  thought.  He  was  a  man  of  supernatural  brilliancy  rather  than  of 
great  genius.  Had  his  work  been  less  witty  and  bright,  he  would  be  charged 
with  superficiality  ;  that  which  saves  him  from  the  accusation  is  the  marvellous 
display  of  mental  acuteness  and  a  perfect  mastery  of  the  French  language.  The 
thought  in  his  productions  is  as  ephemeral  as  that  in  a  morning  newspaper  ;  but 
his  composition  will  serve  to  this  day  as  a  model  of  the  possibilities  of  the  French 
tongue.      In  this  respect  he  is  unrivalled. 

Popular  conceptions  of  Voltaire  are  in  some  respects  erroneous.  He  is  re- 
garded as  an  arch-infidel  and  bitter  foe  of  religion.  On  the  contrary,  he  was  al- 
ways a  deist.  He  never  assails  "  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount,"  nor  can  one  who 
reads  him  carefully  believe  that  there  would  not  have  been  a  subtle  sympathy  be- 
tween him  and  the  best  religious  minds  of  later  days.  He  never  mocked 
men  who  lived  good  lives,  nor  opposed  with  any  bitterness  those  who  were  the 
friends  of  liberty  of  conscience. 


SAMUEL  JOHNSON 

By  Lord  Macaulay 


* 


(i 709-1 784) 


S' 


'AMUEL  Johnson,  one  of  the  most 
eminent  English  writers  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  was  the  son  of 
Michael  Johnson,  who  was,  at  the  be- 
ginning of  that  century,  a  magistrate 
of  Lichfield,  and  a  bookseller  of  great 
note  in  the  Midland  Counties.  Mi- 
chael's abilities  and  attainments  seem 
to  have  been  considerable.  He  was  so 
well  acquainted  with  the  contents  of 
the  volumes  which  he  exposed  to  sale, 
that  the  country  rectors  of  Stafford- 
shire and  Worcestershire  thought  him 
an  oracle  on  points  of  learning.  Be- 
tween him  and  the  clergy,  indeed, 
there  was  a  strong  religious  and  political  sympathy.  He  was  a  zealous  church- 
man, and,  though  he  qualified  himself  for  municipal  office  by  taking  the  oaths  to 

*  Extracts  reprinted  from  Harper's  Magazine  by  permission  of  Messrs.  Harper  &  Brothers. 


100  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

the  sovereigns  in  possession,  was  to  the  last  a  Jacobite  in  heart.  At  his  house,  a 
house  which  is  still  pointed  out  to  every  traveller  who  visits  Lichfield,  Samuel 
was  born,  on  September  i8,  1709.  In  the  child  the  physical,  intellectual,  and 
moral  peculiarities  which  afterward  distinguished  the  man  were  plainly  discern- 
ible ;  great  muscular  strength  accompanied  by  much  awkwardness  and  many  in- 
firmities ;  great  quickness  of  parts,  with  a  morbid  propensity  to  sloth  and  pro- 
crastination ;  a  kind  and  generous  heart,  with  a  gloomy  and  irritable  temper.* 
He  had  inherited  from  his  ancestors  a  scrofulous  taint,  wdiich  it  was  be3'ond  the 
power  of  medicine  to  remove.  His  parents  were  weak  enough  to  believe  that 
the  royal  touch  was  a  specific  for  this  malady.  In  his  third  year  he  was  taken 
up  to  London,  inspected  by  the  court  surgeon,  prayed  over  by  the  court  chap- 
lains, and  stroked  and  presented  with  a  piece  of  gold  by  Queen  Anne.  One  of 
his  earliest  recollections  was  that  of  a  stately  lady  in  a  diamond  stomacher  and  a 
long  black  hood.  Her  hand  was  applied  in  vain.  The  boy's  features,  which 
were  originally  noble  and  not  irregular,  were  distorted  by  his  malady.  His 
cheeks  were  deeply  scarred.  He  lost  for  a  time  the  sight  of  one  eye,  and  he  saw 
but  very  imperfectly  with  the  other.  But  the  force  of  his  mind  overcame  every 
impediment.  Indolent  as  he  was,  he  acquired  knowledge  with  such  ease  and  ra- 
pidity, that  at  every  school  to  which  he  was  sent  he  was  soon  the  best  scholar. 
From  sixteen  to  eighteen  he  resided  at  home,  and  was  left  to  his  own  devices. 
He  learned  much  at  this  time,  though  his  studies  were  without  guidance  and 
without  plan.  He  ransacked  his  father's  shelves,  dipped  into  a  multitude  of 
books,  read  what  w^as  interesting,  and  passed  over  what  was  dull.  An  ordinary 
lad  would  have  acquired  little  or  no  useful  knowledge  in  such  a  way  ;  but  much 
that  was  dull  to  ordinary  lads  was  interesting  to  Samuel. 

While  he  was  thus  irregularly  educating  himself,  his  family  was  sinking  into 
hopeless  poverty.  Old  Michael  Johnson  was  much  better  qualified  to  pore  upon 
books,  and  to  talk  about  them,  than  to  trade  in  them.  His  business  declined; 
his  debts  increased  ;  it  was  with  difficulty  that  the  daily  expenses  of  his  house- 
hold were  defrayed.  It  was  out  of  his  power  to  support  his  son  at  either  univer- 
sity ;  but  a  wealthy  neighbor  offered  assistance  ;  and,  in  reliance  on  promises 
which  proved  to  be  of  very  little  value,  Samuel  was  entered  at  Pembroke  Col- 
lege, Oxford.  When  the  young  scholar  presented  himself  to  the  rulers  of  that 
society,  they  were  amazed  not  more  by  his  ungainly  figure  and  eccentric  manners 
than  by  the  quantity  of  extensive  and  curious  information  which  he  had  picked 
up  during  many  months  of  desultory,  but  not  unprofitable  study.  On  the  first 
day  of  his  residence  he  surprised  his  teachers  by  quoting  Macrobius  ;  and  one  of 
the  most  learned  among  them  declared,  that  he  had  never  known  a  freshman  of 
equal  attainments. 

*  Johnson  himself  tells  a  story  strongly  illustrative  of  the  character  both  of  the  man  and  boy.  He  says, 
"  Once,  indeed,  I  was  disobedient ;  I  refused  to  attend  my  father  to  Uttoxeter-market.  Pride  was  the  source 
of  that  refusal,  and  the  remembrance  of  it  was  painful.  A  few  years  ago,  I  desired  to  atone  for  this  fault ;  I 
went  to  Uttoxeter  in  very  bad  weather,  and  stood  for  a  considerable  time  bareheaded  in  the  rain,  on  the  spot 
where  my  father's  stall  used  to  stand.  In  contrition  I  stood,  and  I  hope  the  penance  was  expiatory." — Bos- 
well's  "  Life  of  Johnson." 


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SAMUEL   JOHNSON  101 

At  Oxford  Johnson  resided  during  about  three  years.  He  was  poor,  even  to 
raggedness  ;  and  his  appearance  excited  a  mirth  and  a  pity  which  were  equally 
intolerable  to  his  haughty  spirit.  He  was  driven  from  the  quadrangle  of  Christ 
Church  by  the  sneering  looks  which  the  members  of  that  aristocratical  society 
cast  at  the  holes  in  his  slioes.  Some  charitable  person  placed  a  new  pair  at  his 
door  ;  but  he  spurned  them  away  in  a  fury.  Distress  made  him,  not  servile,  but 
reckless  and  ungovernable.  No  opulent  gentleman  commoner  panting  for  one- 
and-twenty  could  have  treated  the  academical  authorities  with  more  gross  disre- 
spect. The  needy  scholar  was  generally  to  be  seen  under  the  gate  of  Pembroke, 
a  gate  now  adorned  with  his  efhgy,  haranguing  a  circle  of  lads,  over  whom,  in 
spite  of  his  tattered  gown  and  dirty  linen,  his  wit  and  audacity  gave  him  an  un- 
disputed ascendancy.  In  every  mutiny  against  the  discipline  of  the  college  he 
was  the  ringleader.  Much  was  pardoned,  however,  to  a  youth  so  highly  distin- 
guished by  abilities  and  acquirements.  He  had  early  made  himself  known  by 
turning  Pope's  "  Messiah "  into  Latin  verse.  The  style  and  rhythm,  indeed, 
were  not  exactly  ^^irgilian  ;  but  the  translation  found  many  admirers,  and  was 
read  with  pleasure  by  Pope  himself. 

The  time  drew  near  at  which  Johnson  would,  in  the  ordinary  course  of  things, 
have  become  a  Bachelor  of  Arts  ;  but  he  was  at  the  end  of  his  resources.  Those 
promises  of  support  on  which  he  had  relied  had  not  been  kept.  His  family 
could  do  nothing  for  him.  His  debts  to  Oxford  tradesmen  were  small  indeed, 
yet  larger  than  he  could  pay.  In  the  autumn  of  1731  he  was  under  the  neces- 
sity of  quitting  the  university  without  a  degree.  In  the  following  winter  his 
father  died.  The  old  man  left  but  a  pittance  ;  and  of  that  pittance  almost  the 
whole  was  appropriated  to  the  support  of  his  widow.  The  property  to  which 
Samuel  succeeded  amounted  to  no  more  than  twenty  pounds. 

His  life,  during  the  thirty  years  which  followed,  was  one  hard  struggle  with 
povertv.  The  misery  of  that  struggle  needed  no  aggravation,  but  was  aggravated 
by  the  sufferings  of  an  unsound  body  and  an  unsound  mind.  Before  the  young 
man  left  the  university  his  hereditary  malady  had  broken  forth  in  a  singularly 
cruel  form.  He  had  become  an  incurable  hypochondriac.  He  said  long  after 
that  he  had  been  mad  all  his  life,  or  at  least  not  perfectly  sane  ;  and,  in  truth, 
eccentricities  less  strange  than  his  have  often  been  thought  grounds  sufficient  for 
absolving  felons  and  for  setting  aside  wills.  His  grimaces,  his  gestures,  his  mut- 
terings,  sometimes  diverted  and  sometimes  terrified  people  who  did  not  know 
him. 

With  such  infirmities  of  body  and  of  mind  this  celebrated  man  was  left,  at  two- 
and-twenty,  to  fight  his  way  through  the  world.  He  remained  during  about  five 
years  in  the  Midland  Counties.  At  Lichfield,  his  birthplace  and  his  early  home, 
he  had  inherited  some  friends  and  acquired  others.  He  was  kindly  noticed  by 
Henry  Hervey,  a  gay  officer  of  noble  family,  who  happened  to  be  quartered  there. 
Gilbert  Walmesley,  registrar  of  the  ecclesiastical  court  of  the  diocese,  a  man  of 
distinguished  parts,  learning,  and  knowledge  of  the  world,  did  himself  honor  by 
patronizing  the  young  adventurer,  whose  repulsive  person,  unpolished  manners, 


102  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

and  squalid  garb  moved  many  of  the  petty  aristocracy  of  the  neighborhood  to 
laughter  or  to  disgust.  At  Lichfield,  however,  Johnson  could  find  no  way  of 
earning  a  livelihood.  He  became  usher  of  a  grammar-school  in  Leicestershire  ; 
he  resided  as  a  humble  companion  in  the  house  of  a  country  gentleman  ;  but  a 
life  of  dependence  was  insupportable  to  his  haughty  spirit.  He  repaired  to  Bir- 
mingham, and  there  earned  a  few  guineas  by  literary  drudgery.  In  that  town  he 
printed  a  translation,  little  noticed  at  the  time,  and  long  forgotten,  of  a  Latin 
book  about  Abyssinia.  He  then  put  forth  proposals  for  publishing  by  subscrip- 
tion the  poems  of  Politian,  with  notes  containing  a  history  of  modern  Latin 
verse  ;  but  subscriptions  did  not  come  in  and  the  volume  never  appeared. 

While  leading  this  vagrant  and  miserable  life  Johnson  fell  in  love.  The 
object  of  his  passion  was  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Porter,  a  widow,  who  had  children  as 
old  as  himself.  To  ordinary  spectators  the  lady  appeared  to  be  a  short,  fat, 
coarse  woman,  painted  half  an  inch  thick,  dressed  in  gaudy  colors,  and  fond  of 
exhibiting  provincial  airs  and  graces  which  were  not  exactly  those  of  the  Queens- 
berrys  and  Lepels.  To  Johnson,  however,  whose  passions  were  strong,  whose 
eyesight  was  too  weak  to  distinguish  ceruse  from  natural  bloom,  and  who  had 
seldom  or  never  been  in  the  same  room  with  a  woman  of  real  fashion,  his  Titty, 
as  he  called  her,  was  the  most  beautiful,  graceful,  and  accomplished  of  her  sex. 
That  his  admiration  was  unfeigned  cannot  be  doubted  ;  for  she  was  as  poor  as 
himself.  She  accepted,  with  a  readiness  which  did  her  little  honor,  the  addresses 
of  a  suitor  who  might  have  been  her  son.  The  marriage,  however,  in  spite  of 
occasional  wranglings,  proved  happier  than  might  have  been  expected.  The 
lover  continued  to  be  under  the  illusions  of  the  wedding-day  till  the  lady  died,  in 
her  sixty-fourth  year.  On  her  monument  he  placed  an  inscription,  extolling  the 
charms  of  her  person  and  of  her  manners  ;  and  when,  long  after  her  decease,  he 
had  occasion  to  mention  her,  he  exclaimed,  with  a  tenderness  half  ludicrous,  half 
pathetic,  "  Pretty  creature  !" 

His  marriage  made  it  necessary  for  him  to  exert  himself  more  strenuously 
than  he  had  hitherto  done.  He  took  a  house  in  the  neighborhood  of  his  native 
town  and  advertised  for  pupils.  But  eighteen  months  passed  away,  and  only 
three  pupils  came  to  his  academy.  Indeed,  his  appearance  was  so  strange,  and 
his  temper  so  violent,  that  his  school-room  must  have  resembled  an  ogre's  den. 
Nor  was  the  tawdry,  painted  grandmother  whom  he  called  his  Titty  well  qualified 
to  make  provision  for  the  comfort  of  young  gentlemen.  David  Garrick,  who 
was  one  of  the  pupils,  used,  many  years  later,  to  throw  the  best  company  of 
London  into  convulsions  of  laughter  by  mimicking  the  endearments  of  this 
extraordinary  pair. 

At  length  Johnson,  in  the  twenty-eighth  year  of  his  age,  determined  to  seek 
his  fortune  in  the  capital  as  a  literary  adventurer.  He  set  out  with  a  few 
guineas,  three  acts  of  the  tragedy  of  "  Irene"  in  manuscript,  and  two  or  three 
letters  of  introduction  from  his  friend  Walmesley. 

Some  time  appears  to  have  elapsed  before  Johnson  was  able  to  form  any  lit- 
erary connection  from  which  he  could  expect  more  than  bread  for  the  day  which 


SAiMUEL   JOHNSON  103 

was  passing  over  him.  He  never  forgot  the  generosity  with  which  Hervey,  who 
was  now  residing  in  London,  relieved  his  wants  during  this  time  of  trial.  "  Harry 
Hervey,"  said  the  old  philosopher,  many  years  later,  "  was  a  vicious  man  ;  but  he 
was  very  kind  to  me.  If  you  call  a  dog  Hervey,  I  shall  love  him."  At  Hervey's 
table  Johnson  sometimes  enjoyed  feasts  which  were  made  more  agreeable  by  con- 
trast. But  in  general  he  dined,  and  thought  that  he  dined  well,  on  sixpenny- 
worth  of  meat  and  a  pennyworth  of  bread  at  an  ale-house  near  Drury  Lane. 

About  a  year  after  Johnson  had  begun  to  reside  in  London  he  was  fortunate 
enough  to  obtain  regular  employment  from  Cave,  an  entei'prising  and  intelligent 
bookseller,  who  was  proprietor  and  editor  of  the  Gcntlcviaiis  Magazine. 

A  few  weeks  after  Johnson  had  entered  on  these  obscure  labors  he  published 
a  work  which  at  once  placed  him  high  among  the  writers  of  his  age.  It  is  prob- 
able that  what  he  had  suffered  during  his  first  year  in  London  had  often  reminded 
him  of  some  parts  of  that  noble  poem  in  which  Juvenal  had  described  the  misery 
and  degradation  of  a  needy  man  of  letters,  lodged  among  the  pigeons'  nests  in  the 
tottering  garrets  which  overhung  the  streets  of  Rome.  Pope's  admirable  imita- 
tions of  Horace's  "  Satires  and  Epistles  "  had  recently  appeared,  were  in  every 
hand,  and  were  by  many  readers  thought  superior  to  the  originals.  What  Pope 
had  done  for  Horace,  Johnson  aspired  to  do  for  Juvenal.  The  enterprise  was 
bold,  and  yet  judicious.  For  between  Johnson  and  Juvenal  there  was  much  in 
common — much  more,  certainly,  than  between  Pope  and  Horace. 

Johnson's  "London"  appeared,  without  his  name,  in  May,  1738.  He  received 
only  ten  guineas  for  this  stately  and  vigorous  poem  ;  but  the  sale  was  rapid  and 
the  success  complete.  A  second  edition  was  required  within  a  week.  Those 
small  critics  who  are  always  desirous  to  lower  established  reputations  ran  about 
proclaiming  that  the  anonymous  satirist  was  superior  to  Pope  in  Pope's  own  pe- 
culiar department  of  literature.  It  ought  to  be  remembered,  to  the  honor  of  Pope, 
that  he  joined  heartily  in  the  applause  with  which  the  appearance  of  a  rival  genius 
was  welcomed.  He  then  made  inquiries  about  the  author  of  "  London."  Such 
a  man,  he  said,  could  not  long  be  concealed.  The  name  was  soon  discovered  ; 
and  Pope,  with  great  kindness,  exerted  himself  to  obtain  an  academical  degree 
and  the  mastership  of  a  grammar-school  for  the  poor  young  poet.  The  attempt 
failed,  and  Johnson  remained  a  bookseller's  hack. 

The  fame  of  his  abilities  and  learning  continued  to  grow.  Warburton  pro- 
nounced him  a  man  of  parts  and  genius  ;  and  the  praise  of  Warburton  was  then 
no  light  thing.  Such  was  Johnson's  reputation  that,  in  1747,  several  eminent 
booksellers  combined  to  employ  him  in  the  arduous  work  of  preparing  a  diction- 
ary of  the  English  language,  in  two  folio  volumes.  The  sum  which  they  agreed 
to  pay  him  was  only  fifteen  hundred  guineas  ;  and  out  of  this  sum  he  had  to  pay 
several  poor  men  of  letters  who  assisted  him  in  the  humbler  parts  of  his  task. 

Johnson  had  flattered  himself  that  he  should  have  completed  his  dictionary 
by  the  end  of  1750,  but  it  was  not  till  1755  that  he  at  length  gave  his  huge  vol- 
umes to  the  world.  During  the  seven  years  which  he  passed  in  the  drudgery  of 
penning  definitions  and  marking  quotations  for  transcription,  he  sought  for  re- 


104  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

laxaliun  in  literary  labor  of  a  more  agreeable  kind.  In  1749  he  published  the 
"Vanity  of  Human  Wishes,"  an  excellent  imitation  of  the  Tenth  Satire  of  Ju- 
venal. It  is,  in  truth,  not  easy  to  say  whether  the  palm  belongs  to  the  ancient  or 
to  the  modern  poet. 

About  a  year  after  the  representation  of  "  Irene  "  he  began  to  publish  a  series 
of  short  essays  on  morals,  manners,  and  literature.  This  species  of  composition  had 
been  brought  into  fashion  by  the  success  of  The  Tattler,  and  by  the  still  more  brill- 
iant success  of  The  Spectator.  A  crowd  of  small  writers  had  vainly  attemj^ited 
to  rival  Addison.  The  Lay  Monastery,  The  Censor,  T/ie  Freethinker,  The  Plain- 
Dealer,  The  Champion,  and  other  works  of  the  same  kind,  had  had  their  short  day. 
None  of  them  had  obtained  a  permanent  place  in  our  literature,  and  thev  are 
now  to  be  found  only  in  the  libraries  of  the  curious.  At  length  Johnson  under- 
took the  adv^enture  in  which  so  many  aspirants  had  failed.  In  the  thirty-sixth 
year  after  the  appearance  of  the  last  number  of  The  Spectator  appeared  the  first 
number  of  The  Rambler.  From  March,  1750,  to  March,  1752,  this  paper  con- 
tinued to  come  out  every  Tuesday  and  Saturday. 

From  the  first  The  Rambler  was  enthusiastically  admired  by  a  few  eminent 
men.  Richardson,  when  only  five  numbers  had  appeared,  pronounced  it  equal 
if  not  superior  to  The  Spectator.  Young  and  Hartley  expressed  their  approba- 
tion not  less  warmly.  Bubb  Dodington,  among  whose  faults  indifference  to  the 
claims  of  genius  and  learning  cannot  be  reckoned,  solicited  the  acquaintance  of 
the  writer.  In  consequence  probably  of  the  good  offices  of  Dodington,  who  was 
then  the  confidential  adviser  of  Prince  Frederick,  two  of  his  Royal  Highness's 
gentlemen  carried  a  gracious  message  to  the  printing-office,  and  ordered  seven 
copies  for  Leicester  House. 

The  last  Rambler  was  written  in  a  sad  and  gloomy  hour.  Mrs.  Johnson  had 
been  given  over  by  the  physicians.  Three  days  later  she  died.  She  left  her  hus- 
band almost  broken-hearted.  Many  people  had  been  surprised  to  see  a  man  of 
his  genius  and  learning  stooping  to  every  drudgery  and  denying  himself  almost 
every  comfort,  for  the  purpose  of  supplying  a  silly,  affected  old  woman  with  su- 
perfluities which  she  accepted  with  but  little  gratitude.  But  all  his  affection  had 
been  concentrated  on  her.  He  had  neither  brother  nor  sister,  neither  son  nor 
daughter.  To  him  she  was  as  beautiful  as  the  Gunnings,  and  witty  as  Lady 
Mary.  Her  opinion  of  his  writings  was  more  important  to  him  than  the  voice 
of  the  pit  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre,  or  the  judgment  of  the  Monthly  Review.  The 
chief  support  wiiich  had  sustained  him  through  the  most  arduous  labor  of  his  life 
was  the  hope  that  she  would  enjoy  the  fame  and  the  profit  which  he  anticipated 
from  his  Dictionary.  She  was  gone  ;  and  in  that  vast  labyrinth  of  streets, 
peopled  by  eight  hundred  thousand  human  beings,  he  was  alone.  Yet  it  was 
necessary  for  him  to  set  himself,  as  he  expressed  it,  doggedly  to  work.  After 
three  more  laborious  years  the  Dictionary  was  at  length  complete. 

In  the  spring  of  1758  Johnson  put  forth  the  first  of  a  series  of  essays  en- 
titled The  Idler.  During  two  years  these  essays  continued  to  appear  weekly. 
They  were  eagerly  read,  widely  circulated,  and,  indeed,  impudently  pirated  while 


SAMUEL   JOHNSON  105 

they  were  still  in  the  original  form,  and  had  a  large  sale  when  collected  intc 
volumes.  Tlie  Idler  may  be  described  as  a  second  part  of  The  Rambler,  some- 
what livelier  and  somewhat  weaker  than  the  first  part. 

While  Johnson  was  busied  with  his  Idlers,  his  mother,  who  had  accomplished 
her  ninetieth  year,  died  at  Lichfield.  It  was  long  since  he  had  seen  her  ;  but  he 
had  not  failed  to  contribute  largely  out  of  his  small  means  to  her  comfort.  In 
order  to  defray  the  charges  of  her  funeral,  and  to  pay  some  debts  which  she  had 
left,  he  wrote  a  little  book  in  a  single  week,  and  sent  off  the  sheets  to  the  press 
without  reading  them  over.  A  hundred  pounds  were  paid  him  for  the  copy- 
right ;  and  the  purchasers  had  great  cause  to  be  pleased  with  their  bargain,  for 
the  book  was  ■'  Rasselas." 

By  such  exertions  as  have  been  described  Johnson  supported  himself  till  the 
year  1762.  In  that  year  a  great  change  in  his  circumstances  took  place.  He 
had  from  a  child  been  an  enemy  of  the  reigning  dynasty.  His  Jacobite 
prejudices  had  been  exhibited  with  little  disguise  both  in  his  works  and  in  his 
conversation.  Even  in  his  massy  and  elaborate  Dictionary  he  had,  with  a  strange 
want  of  taste  and  judgment,  inserted  bitter  and  contumelious  reflections  on  the 
Whig  party.  The  excise,  which  was  a  favorite  resource  of  Whig  financiers,  he 
had  designated  as  a  hateful  tax.  He  had  railed  against  the  Commissioners  of  Ex- 
cise in  language  so  coarse  that  they  had  seriously  thought  of  prosecuting  him. 
He  had  with  difficulty  been  prevented  from  holding  up  the  Lord  Privy  Seal  by 
name  as  an  example  of  the  meaning  of  the  word  "  renegade."  A  pension  he  had 
defined  as  a  pay  given  to  a  state  hireling  to  betray  his  country  ;  a  pensioner  as 
a  slave  of  state  hired  by  a  stipend  to  obey  a  master.  It  seemed  unlikely  that 
the  author  of  these  definitions  would  himself  be  pensioned.  But  that  was  a 
time  of  wonders.  George  the  Third  had  ascended  the  throne,  and  had,  in  the 
course  of  a  few  months,  disgusted  many  of  the  old  friends,  and  conciliated  many 
of  the  old  enemies  of  his  house.  The  city  was  becoming  mutinous.  Oxford 
was  becoming  loyal.  Cavendishes  and  Bentincks  were  murmuring.  Somersets 
and  Wyndhams  were  hastening  to  kiss  hands.  The  head  of  the  treasury  was  now 
Lord  Bute,  who  was  a  Tory,  and  could  have  no  objection  to  Johnson's  Toryism. 
Bute  wished  to  be  thought  a  patron  of  men  of  letters,  and  Johnson  was  one  of 
the  most  eminent,  and  one  of  the  most  needy  men  of  letters  in  Europe.  A  pen- 
sion of  three  hundred  a  year  was  graciously  offered,  and  with  very  little  hesita- 
tion accepted. 

This  event  produced  a  change  in  Johnson's  whole  way  of  life.  For  the  first 
time  since  his  boyhood  he  no  longer  felt  the  daily  goad  urging  him  to  the  daily 
toil.  He  was  at  liberty,  after  thirty  years  of  anxiety  and  drudgery,  to  indulge 
his  constitutional  indolence,  to  lie  in  bed  till  two  in  the  afternoon,  and  to  sit  up 
talking  till  four  in  the  morning,  without  fearing  cither  the  printer's  devil  or  the 
sheriff's  officer. 

But  though  his  pen  was  now  idle,  his  tongue  was  active.  The  influence  e.X' 
crcised  by  his  conversation,  directly  upon  those  with  whom  he  lived,  and  indi- 
rectly on  the  whole  literary  world,  was  altogether  without  parallel.     His  col- 


106  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

loquial  talents  were  indeed  of  the  highest  order.  He  had  strong  sense,  quick 
discernment,  wit,  humor,  immense  knowledge  of  literature  and  of  life,  and  an  in- 
finite store  of  curious  anecdotes.  As  respected  style,  he  spoke  far  better  than  he 
wrote.  Every  sentence  which  dropped  from  his  lips  was  as  correct  in  structure 
as  the  most  nicely  balanced  period  of  The  Rambler.  But  in  his  talk  there  were 
no  pompous  triads,  and  little  more  than  a  fair  proportion  of  words  in  osity  and 
ation.  All  was  simplicity,  ease,  and  vigor.  He  uttered  his  short,  weighty, 
and  pointed  sentences  with  a  power  of  voice,  and  a  justness  and  energy  of  em- 
phasis, of  which  the  effect  was  rather  increased  than  diminished  by  the  rollings 
of  his  huge  form,  and  by  the  asthmatic  gaspings  and  puffings  in  which  the  peals 
of  his  eloquence  generally  ended.  Nor  did  the  laziness  which  made  him  unwill- 
ing to  sit  down  to  his  desk  prevent  him  from  giving  instruction  or  entertainment 
orally.  To  discuss  questions  of  taste,  of  learning,  of  casuistry,  in  language  so 
exact  and  so  forcible  that  it  might  have  been  printed  without  the  alteration  of  a 
word,  was  to  him  no  exertion,  but  a  pleasure.  He  loved,  as  he  said,  to  fold  his 
legs  and  have  his  talk  out.  He  was  ready  to  bestow  the  overflowings  of  his  full 
mind  on  anybody  who  would  start  a  subject,  on  a  fellow-passenger  in  a  stage- 
coach, or  on  the  person  who  sat  at  the  same  table  with  him  in  an  eating-house. 
But  his  conversation  was  nowhere  so  brilliant  and  striking  as  when  he  was  sur- 
rounded by  a  few  friends,  whose  abilities  and  knowledge  enabled  them,  as  he 
once  expressed  it,  to  send  him  back  every  ball  that  he  threw. 

On  Easter  eve,  1777,  some  persons,  deputed  by  a  meeting  which  consisted  of 
forty  of  the  first  booksellers  in  London,  called  upon  Johnson.  Though  he  had 
some  scruples  about  doing  business  at  that  season,  he  received  his  visitors  with 
much  civility.  They  came  to  inform  him  that  a  new  edition  of  the  English 
poets,  from  Cowley  downward,  was  in  contemplation,  and  to  ask  him  to  furnish 
short  biographical  prefaces.  He  readily  undertook  the  task,  a  task  for  which  he 
was  pre-eminently  qualified.  His  knowledge  of  the  literary  history  of  England 
since  the  Restoration  was  unrivalled.  That  knowledge  he  had  derived  partly  from 
books,  and  partly  from  sources  which  had  long  been  closed  ;  from  old  Grub- 
Street  traditions  ;  from  the  talk  of  forgotten  poetasters  and  pamphleteers  who 
had  long  been  lying  in  parish  vaults  ;  from  the  recollections  of  such  men  as  Gil- 
bert Walmesley,  who  had  conversed  with  the  wits  of  Button  ;  Gibber,  who  had 
mutilated  the  plays  of  two  generations  of  dramatists  ;  Orrery,  who  had  been  ad- 
mitted to  the  society  of  Swift ;  and  Savage,  who  had  rendered  services  of  no 
very  honorable  kind  to  Pope.  The  biographer,  therefore,  sat  down  to  his  task 
with  a  mind  full  of  matter.  He  had  at  first  intended  to  give  only  a  paragraph  to 
every  minor  poet,  and  only  four  or  five  pages  to  the  greatest  name.  But  the 
flood  of  anecdote  and  criticism  overflowed  the  narrow  channel.  The  work, 
which  was  originally  meant  to  consist  only  of  a  few  sheets,  swelled  into  ten  vol- 
umes— small  volumes,  it  is  true,  and  not  closely  printed.  The  first  four  appeared 
in  1779,  the  remaining  six  in  1781. 

When  at  length  the  moment,  dreaded  through  so  many  years,  came  close,  the 
dark  cloud   passed  away  from  Johnson's  mind.      His  temper  became  unusually 


THOMAS    CHATTERTON 


107 


patient  and  gentle  ;  he  ceased  to  think  with  terror  of  death,  and  of  that  which 
lies  beyond  death ;  and  he  spoke  much  of  the  mercy  of  God,  and  of  the  propitia- 
tion of  Christ.  In  this  serene  frame  of  mind  he  died,  on  December  13,  1784. 
He  was  laid,  a  week  later,  in  Westminster  Abbey,  among  the  eminent  men  of 
whom  he  had  been  the  historian — Cowley  and  Denham,  Dryden  and  Congreve, 
Gay,  Prior,  and  Addison. 


THOMAS   CHATTERTON* 

By  Colonel   Richard   Malcolm  Johnston 
(i 752-1 770) 


T" 


>HOMAS  Chatterton,  whosc  career 
among  all  those  of  English  men  of  let- 
ters was  the  most  eccentric,  was  a  posthumous 
son  of  a  poor  man  who,  besides  being  a  choir- 
singer,  kept  the  Pyle  Street  School  in  the 
city  of  Bristol,  England.  In  a  small  tene- 
ment-house near  by  he  was  born,  November 
20,  1752.  The  mother  maintained  her  two 
children,  Thomas  and  a  daughter  two  years 
older,  by  keeping  a  small  school  for  girls. 
At  the  age  of  five  years  the  boy  was  sent  to 
the  Pyle  Street  School,  where  the  master, 
unable  to  teach  him  anything  and  deciding 
that  he  was  an  idiot,  dismissed  him.  For  a 
year  and  a  half  afterward  he  was  so  regard- 
—  ed.       During  this  time   he  was  often   sub- 

jected to  pariiw^iiiN  of  grief  which  were  expressed  generally  in  silent  tears,  but 
sometimes  in  cries  continued  for  many  hours.  By  many  an  expedient  of  a  par- 
ent who  understood  him  not,  from  frequent  serious  affectionate  remonstrance  to 
an  occasional  blow  upon  his  face,  he  was  led  or  forced  along.  One  day  this  par- 
ent, while  about  to  destroy  an  old  manuscript  in  French,  noticed  the  child  look- 
ing with  intense  interest  at  the  illuminated  letters  upon  its  pages.  Withholding 
the  paper  from  its  threatened  destruction  she  briefly  succeeded  in  teaching  him 
therefrom  the  alphabet,  and  in  time  from  a  black-letter  Bible  he  learned  to  read. 
Not  long  afterward  the  family  removed  to  a  house  near  the  Church  of  St.  Mary 
Redcliffe,  one  of  the  oldest  and  noblest  among  the  parochial  structures  in  Eng- 
land. In  a  room  called  the  Treasury  House,  over  one  of  the  porches  of  this 
church,  was  a  pile  of  ancient  documents,  muniments  of  title,  parish  registers, 
and  other  things,  which  had  been  removed  by  the  latest  Chatterton,  and  which 

"  Copyright,  1894,  by  Sclniar  Hess. 


108  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

were  kept  in  the  house  now  occupied  by  the  family.  The  boy  when  eight 
years  old  was  sent  to  the  Blue  Coat,  a  charity  school,  where  he  learned  with  ra- 
pidity the  elements  taught  thereat.  The  time  not  occupied  with  school  tasks 
he  devoted  to  reading  whatever  books  he  could  borrow  or  obtain  from  a  cir- 
culating library.  While  engaged  in  study  he  seemed  unaware  of  everything  pass- 
ing around  him.  At  twelve  years  of  age  he  probably  had  read  a  larger  number 
of  books  than  any  child  who  ever  lived. 

It  is  curious  to  study  how  the  genius  of  some  persons  is  developed  and  their 
destiny  determined  by  the  conditions  of  their  childhood.  The  Chattertons  for  a 
hundred  and  fifty  years  had  been  sextons  in  St.  Mary  Redcliffe,  the  last  being 
John,  uncle  of  the  poet.  Whatever  might  have  been  in  the  transmission  through 
several  generations  of  ghostly  interest  in  this  monument  of  the  Middle  Ages,  it 
is  known  that  to  Thomas  Chatterton  it  was  of  all  earthly  objects  the  one  most 
interesting.  For  the  sports  of  other  lads  he  had  no  heart ;  his  leisure  time  was 
spent  in  the  church,  and  in  the  study  of  its  history  and  its  varied  quaint  literature. 
In  time  he  began  to  imitate  the  ancient  manuscripts  now  in  his  mother's  house, 
and  with  ochre,  charcoal,  and  black  lead,  his  success  in  that  line  was  marvellous. 
These  habits  induced  others  kindred,  among  them  absence  of  mind,  under  whose 
influence,  sometimes,  when  in  the  company  of  others,  he  gazed  silently  at  and 
about  them  with  dreaminess,  as  if  he  was  thinking  how  to  connect  contemporary 
things  strange  to  him  with  those,  his  only  familiars,  two  centuries  before.  It 
seems  a  pity  for  such  a  spirit  to  be  without  other  guides  than  a  weak,  toiling 
mother,  and  a  teacher  dull  and  despotic  as  the  head-master  of  the  Blue  Coat 
School.  Of  other  things  than  books  he  had  opportunities  to  learn  little.  The 
sense  of  honorable  duty,  either  he  had  not  been  taught  or  its  principles  had  been 
inculcated  in  ways  too  meaningless  to  make  enduring  impression  upon  his  being. 
Under  influences  more  benign  he  might  have  made  a  career,  if  not  more  brilliant, 
more  felicitous.  At  the  age  of  ten  years  he  wrote  some  verses  entitled  "On  the 
Last  Epiphany,"  which,  printed  in  Farlcfs  Journal,  showed  that  he  had,  if  not 
high  poetic  genius,  at  least  extraordinary  sensibility  of  rhythm.  Unfortunately 
his  mind  conceived  for  most  of  what  he  saw  around  him  a  hostility  which  drove 
him  to  express  it  in  satirical  phrase.  A  church-warden,  whose  name  of  Joseph 
Thomas  would  not  have  survived  but  for  Chatterton's  verses,  was  made  im- 
mortal for  the  changes  made  b}^  him  while  intent  upon  destroying  ancient  monu- 
ments, interfering  with  his  own  ideas  of  churchyard  regularities.  Some  of  the 
levellings  of  this  man,  particularly  of  an  ancient  cross  mentioned  by  William  of 
Worcester  three  centuries  back,  were  scourged  with  a  lash  much  imitating  that 
of  Alexander  Pope,  perhaps  the  only  really  existing  poet  whom  he  sought  to 
imitate.  Praises  accorded  to  him  inspired  the  feeling  that  if  he  could  meet  op- 
portunities entirely  favorable,  he  could  become  illustrious  ;  and  it  is  touching  to 
note  that  in  this  ambition  his  leading  thought  was  to  be  able  to  lift  his  mother 
and  sister  far  above  their  lowly  estate.  Insufficiently  taught  in  principles  of  per- 
sonal rectitude,  persuaded  that  greatest  possessions  were  obtainable  mainly 
through  fraud,  he  commenced  that  strange  career  which  none  but  a  mind  so  lit 


THOMAS   CHATTERTON  109 

tie  instructed  could  have  failed  to  see  must  end  in  disaster.  There  can  hardly  be 
a  doubt  that  insanity,  if  not  born  with  him,  was  settling  upon  his  understanding, 
and  that  no  degree  of  careful  guidance  or  successful  venture  would  have  im- 
parted entire  relief. 

In  his  fifteenth  year  he  was  apprenticed  to  John  Lambert,  an  attorney  of 
Bristol,  by  whom  he  was  set  to  copying  legal  documents,  an  employment  that 
lent  many  hours  of  leisure,  which  he  devoted  to  study  in  heraldry  and  Old  Eng- 
lish. With  these  he  became  familiar,  and  then  he  began  those  impostures  that 
were  the  bane  of  his  short  remnant  of  life.  The  first  of  these  had  for  its  victim, 
one  Burgum,  a  pewterer,  whose  ignorance  and  vanity  exposed  him  to  the  lad's 
designs  to  obtain  money  from  him  by  flattery.  Like  many  others  in  such  condi- 
tions, the  pewterer  had  eager  desire  to  be  thought  a  descendant  of  ancestry  for- 
merly of  high  lineage.  One  day  he  was  told  by  Chatterton  that  among  the  an- 
cient parchments  appertaining  to  Saint  Mary  Redcliffe,  he  had  discovered  one 
with  blazon  of  the  De  Bergham  arms,  and  he  intimated  that  from  that  noble 
family  he,  the  pewterer,  may  have  descended.  The  document  was  made  out 
wholly  by  Chatterton.  Investigation  satisfied  Burgum  fully,  and  in  return  for 
the  discovery  he  gave  the  boy  a  crown-piece.  This  compensation  seemed  so  in- 
adequate that  the  discoverer  afterward  celebrated  it  thus : 

"  Gods  !     What  would  Burgum  give  to  get  a  name 
And  snatch  the  blundering  dialect  from  shame  ? 
What  would  he  give  to  hand  his  memory  down 
To  time's  remotest  boundary  ?     A  crown  !  " 

A  year  afterward,  on  occasion  of  the  completion  of  the  new  bridge  over  the 
river  Avon,  he  astonished  the  whole  town  by  a  paper  printed  in  the  Bristol 
Weekly  Journal,  with  the  signature  of  "  Dunelmus  Bristoliensis,"  which  was  pre- 
tended to  have  been  discovered  among  those  multitudinous  papers  of  the  Treas- 
ury House,  and  which  gave  account  of  the  city  mayor's  first  passage  over  the  old 
bridge  that  had  been  dedicated  to  the  Assumption  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  by  King 
Edward  III.  and  his  queen,  Philippa.  Search  for  the  sender  was  expedited  by 
his  offer  of  further  contributions  on  the  same  line,  and  wonderful  was  the  success 
attending  his  devices.  No  less  than  the  other  citizens  was  misled  William  Bar- 
rett, a  learned  surgeon  and  antiquary  then  engaged  upon  a  history  of  Bristol. 
This  man,  who  had  been  signally  kind  to  the  orphan,  availed  himself  freely  of  his 
pretended  findings,  paid  for  them  liberally,  and  used  them  in  the  preparation  of 
his  book.  What  pleased  him  most  was  the  discovery  that  Bristol,  among  other 
notables  two  centuries  back,  had  a  great  poet  in  the  person  of  Thomas  Rowlie,  a 
priest,  who,  among  other  things,  had  written  a  great  poem  entitled  "  The  Bris 
towe  Tragedie  ;  or,  the  Dethe  of  Syr  Charles  Bawdin,"  founded  upon  the  execu- 
tion of  Sir  Baldwin  Fulford,  in  1461,  by  order  of  Edward  IV.  This  was  indeed 
a  great  poem.  The  muse  of  tragedy  had  inspired  the  young  maniac  with  much 
of  her  consuming  fervor.     The  verses  containing  the  intercession  of   Canynge, 


no  ARTISTS  AND   AUTHORS 

mayor  of  Bristol,  and  his  ideas  of  the  chicfest  duties  of  a  monarch  are  among  the 
most  touching  and  noble  among  their  likes  in  all  literature. 

As  a  contributor  to  the  Town  and  Country  Magazine  he  obtained  many  a 
shilling,  but  far  less  often  than  what  would  have  satisfied  his  eager  wants,  fore- 
most among  which  was  to  see  his  mother  and  sister  established  in  fine  vestments 
and  living  in  luxury.  In  time  he  grew  to  feel  contempt  for  the  Bristol  people, 
high  and  low,  and  then  he  turned  his  eyes  upon  London.  Application  to  Dods- 
ley,  the  leading  publisher,  was  discouraged  for  v/ant  of  acquaintance  with  his  con- 
dition and  responsibility.  He  then  essayed  Horace  Walpole,  sending  an  ode  on 
King  Richard  I.  for  his  work  "Anecdotes  of  Painting,"  and  undertaking  to  fur- 
nish the  names  of  several  great  painters,  natives  of  Bristol.  This  application  was 
signed  "John  Abbot  of  St.  Austin's  Mmster,  Bristol."  In  the  letter  he  drew  at- 
tention to  the  "  Bristowe  Tragedie  "  and  other  Rowlie  poems.  Walpole,  who  was 
as  cold  as  urbane,  expressed  some  curiosity  to  see  these  productions,  which,  when 
sent,  he  referred  to  Gray  and  Mason.  These  pronounced  them  forgeries.  Where- 
upon Walpole,  in  the  meantime  informed  of  the  real  author  and  his  condition, 
paid  no  further  attention  to  the  papers  for  a  while,  even  to  the  request  to  return 
them.  Enraged  but  undaunted  by  this  failure  he  continued  his  work,  both  in  old 
and  contemporary  English  speech,  producing  "Aella,"  "Goddwyn,"  "  Battle  of 
Hastings,"  "  Consuliad,"  "  Revenge,"  etc.  At  length  he  grew  restless  to  a  degree 
beyond  endurance.  W^ith  the  few  acquaintances  of  his  own  age  he  talked  of 
suicide.  Feeling  himself  a  stranger  in  that  society,  often  spending  whole  nights  in 
wakeful  dreams  instead  of  restful  sleep,  incensed  with  limitless  ambition,  he  did  in- 
deed meditate  upon  making  an  end  of  himself.  Among  the  papers  on  his  desk  one 
day  was  found  his  will,  a  singular  document,  containing  among  other  things  most 
incoherent  bequests  to  several  acquaintances,  as  of  his  "  vigor  and  fire  of  youth  " 
to  George  Catcall,  the  schoolmaster;  "his  humility"  to  the  Rev.  Mr.  Camplin  ; 
his  "  prosody  and  grammar  "  and  a  "  moiety  "  of  his  "  modesty  "  to  Mr.  Burffum  ; 
concluding  with  directions  to  Paull  Farr  and  John  Flower,  "  at  their  own  ex- 
pense "to  erect  a  monument  upon  his  grave  with  this  inscription  :  "To  the  mem- 
ory of  Thomas  Chatterton.  Reader,  judge  not.  If  thou  art  a  Christian,  believe 
that  he  shall  be  judged  by  a  Supreme  Power;  to  that  power  alone  is  he  now 
answerable." 

This  document  led  to  his  dismissal  by  the  attorney,  who,  in  April  1770,  re- 
turned to  him  his  indentures.  He  at  once  set  out  for  London  with  his  manu- 
scripts and  a  small  sum  of  money  raised  by  a  few  persons  in  Bristol.  Through 
the  help  of  a  female  relative  he  got  board  at  the  house  of  one  Walmsley,  a  plas- 
terer, in  Shoreditch.  In  the  history  of  literature  nothing  can  be  found  so  much 
to  be  compassionated  as  the  life  led  by  him  during  those  summer  months  in  the 
great  city.  Plodding  the  streets  from  day  to  day  with  his  manuscripts,  living 
mainly  upon  bread  and  water,  not  retiring  to  bed  at  night  until  near  the  morn- 
ing, and  then  seldom  closing  his  eyes,  yet  in  this  time  guilty  of  no  sort  of  known 
immorality,  sending  home  frequent  letters  abounding  in  expressions  of  most  fer- 
vid hopes  and  in  promises  of  silks  and  other  fine  things  to  the  objects  of  his 


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THOMAS   CHATTERTON  111 

affection,  few  cases  could  have  appealed  more  piteously  for  help.  The  wits  who 
miffht  have  succored  were  out  of  town.  Goldsmith  lamented  that  he  had  not 
known  him.  Johnson,  with  his  stern  kindness,  if  such  a  thing  had  been  possible, 
could  have  saved  him  from  despair.  His  deportment  in  the  family  with  whom 
he  lived  was  without  exception  of  decorum,  although  he  showed  that  any  move- 
ment toward  familiarity  with  him  was  offensive.  In  his  sore  stress  he  began  to 
write  papers  upon  politics,  which  were  accepted  by  the  partisan  press.  It  was  at 
the  time  when  the  arbitrary  encroachments  of  George  III.  were  met  by  the 
audacious  courage  of  Mayor  Beckford.  Chatterton  attached  himself  to  the  pop- 
ular side  ;  yet  he  seemed  to  have  regret  for  the  mistake  in  so  doing,  because  of 
the  comparative  want  of  money  in  that  party.  In  a  long  letter  written  to  his 
sister,  most  of  which  is  occupied  with  his  great  undertakings,  he  spoke  thus  of 
his  political  works : 

"  But  the  devil  of  the  matter  is,  there  is  no  money  to  be  got  on  this  side  of 
the  question.  Interest  is  on  the  other  side.  But  he  is  a  poor  author  who  cannot 
write  on  both  sides.  I  believe  I  may  be  introduced  (and  if  not  I'll  introduce 
myself)  to  a  ruling  power  in  the  court  party.  I  might  have  a  recommendation 
to  Sir  George  Colebrook,  an  East  India  director,  as  qualified  for  an  office  by  no 
means  despicable  ;  but  I  shall  not  take  a  step  to  the  sea  whilst  I  can  continue  on 
land."  In  the  midst  of  this  struggle  Beckford,  the  champion  of  popular  rights, 
died  suddenly,  and  the  Walmsleys  afterward  testified  that  this  event  put  Chatter- 
ton  "perfectly  out  of  his  mind." 

Soon  after  this  he  removed  to  Brook  Street,  Holborn,  and  became  a  boarder 
in  the  house  of  one  Angell,  a  sack-maker.  Here  he  continued  to  work  day  and 
night  until  desperation,  long  threatened,  seized  upon  him.  Court  journals  grew 
tired  of  articles  showing  little  talent  for  political  discussion,  and  he  became  ragged 
and  almost  shoeless.  In  the  only  despondent  letter  ever  sent  to  his  mother,  he 
wrote  of  having  stumbled  into  an  open  grave  one  day  while  walking  in  St.  Pan- 
cras's  Churchyard.  The  Angells,  touched  with  his  poverty  and  distress,  kindly 
offered  him  food,  which,  except  in  one  instance,  he  declined.  One  night  after 
sitting  with  the  family,  apparently  given  over  to  despondency,  he  took  affection- 
ate leave  of  his  hostess  and  the  next  morning  was  found  dead  from  a  dose  of 
arsenic. 

It  was  singular  that  the  Rowlie  writings  were  so  far  superior  to  his  produc- 
tions in  modern  English.  The  latter  were  commonplace,  the  former  indicative 
of  much  genius.  Indeed,  one  of  the  strongest  evidences  against  their  genuine- 
ness was  the  moral  impossibility  of  their  production  in  the  age  to  which  he  as- 
signed them.  The  imitation  was  as  pathetic  as  it  was  audacious,  attempted  thus 
in  honor  of  a  model  that  never  had  existed. 


112 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


ROBERT  BURNS* 

By  Will  Carleton 
(1759-1796) 


■p)  OBERT  Burns,  the  great  lyric  poet  of  Scot- 


land, was  born  January  25,  1759,  "^^i'  the 
sea-coast  town  of  Ayr.  His  father,  William 
Burness,  had  all  he  could  do  to  supjDort  a  fam- 
ily of  children,  of  whom  Robert  was  the  eldest. 
The  boy  soon  became  a  stalwart  toiler  and 
could  turn  a  furrow  and  reap  a  swath  with  the 
best  of  his  comrades ;  but  his  mind  meanwhile 
grasped  strongly  and  passionately  all  the  litera- 
ture to  which  it  could  get  access.  This  was 
limited  in  extent ;  the  books  in  his  father's 
humble  cottage  were  very  few.  He  devoured, 
besides,  everything  in  prose  and  verse  that  he 
could  buy  or  borrow ;  and  there  were  soon 
aroused  in  him  all  the  longings  of  repressed 
genius  and  unemployed  ambition. 

Many  of  Burns's  poems  have  had  music 
set  to  them  ;  but  he  began  his  rhythmical  career  by  fitting  poetry  to  music.  A 
girl  friend  often  worked  beside  him  in  the  fields,  as  was  the  custom  in  that 
locality.  She  was  a  beautiful  songstress,  or  at  least  seemed  so  to  the  untutored 
peasant-boy,  and  Robert  soon  learned  to  put  new  words  to  many  of  her  tunes, 
not  forgetting  to  include  in  them  due  commendations  of  the  young  lady  herself. 
These  efforts  naturally  received  more  or  less  applause ;  and  the  youth  found  his 
mind  more  and  more  drawn  toward  poetic  effort. 

His  first  few  years  seem  to  have  been  spent  in  a  half-happy,  half-careless 
boyhood  ;  in  them  he  had  all  the  experiences  of  a  poor  but  healthy  Scotch 
peasant-lad,  toiling  in  the  fields,  catching  now  and  then  a  few  weeks  or  months 
at  school,  coquetting  with  neighboring  lasses,  but  with  poverty  and  lack  of  social 
position  always  barring  the  wav  to  his  advancement. 

Through  all  this,  poetry  was  his  solace  and  amusement ;  at  the  age  of  fifteen 
he  had  written  many  verses  which,  although  crude,  contained  the  promise  of  his 
subsequent  career ;  but  of  course  at  that  time  they  were  admired  only  by  a 
limited  circle  of  his  neighbors  and  friends.  He  also  unhappily  contracted  certain 
convivial  habits,  which  lasted  in  a  greater  or  less  degree  all  through  his  life, 
which  no  one  regretted  more  than  he  did  at  times,  and  which  greatly  impaired 
and  finally  put  an  early  end  to  a  brilliant  career. 

When  Robert  was  twenty-five  years  old  his  father,  the  good  William  Burness, 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


ROBERT    BURNS  113 

died,  and  the  family,  who  had  kept  well  together,  took  a  farm  about  eight  miles 
distant  from  the  old  home,  near  Ayr.  Here  the  young  farmer-poet  undertook 
to  become  a  thorough  and  industrious  husbandman.  He  turned  his  attention 
toward  the  literature  of  the  farm  ;  he  tried  to  bend  his  powerful  though  dreamy 
mind  toward  the  prosaic  and  the  practical.  But  the  venture  did  not  thrive  ; 
some  of  the  thousand-and-one  casualties  that  are  always  besetting  crops  and 
crop-growers  came  his  way,  and  the  brave  venture  which  he  and  his  brother 
Gilbert  had  undertaken  together,  proved  scant  of  success. 

He,  however,  may  be  said  to  have  done  the  greatest  work  of  his  life  upon 
that  farm.  It  was  while  one  day  weeding  the  "  kailyard,"  or  garden,  with  his 
brother,  that  he  first  decided,  after  they  had  talked  it  carefully  over,  to  be  an  au- 
thor, and  to  write  verses  that  would  "  bear  publishing."  It  is  to  be  noticed  that 
from  this  hour  he  became  more  methodical  with  his  muse  and  seemed  to  work 
toward  a  purpose  ;  and  that  within  a  short  time  after  this  resolve  he  wrote  most 
of  the  poems  that  have  made  his  name  immortal. 

In  1786  it  was  definitely  decided  that  the  farm  was  not  going  "to  pay,"  and 
that  his  efforts  as  an  agriculturist  had  failed.  But  these  were  not  the  only  troub- 
les that  were  gathering  in  the  young  poet's  path.  In  1785  he  became  engaged 
to  his  "  Highland  Mary."  If  we  may  judge  by  his  poems,  this  was  the  one  among 
his  numerous  love  affairs  in  which  his  heart  was  most  deeply  enthralled  ;  but 
there  was  another  in  which  he  was  inextricably  and  fatally  entangled.  It  was  with 
a  young  girl,  Jean  Armour,  to  whom  he  seems  to  have  been  as  sincerely  attached 
as  his  headlong,  susceptible  nature  would  allow  him  to  be  to  anyone.  He 
made  the  best  amends  he  could  to  "  the  bonnie  lass  "  by  giving  her  his  written 
acknowledgment  of  marriage — a  process  perfectly  legal  in  Scotland,  though  ir- 
regular— but  her  father  still  hoped  for  a  more  advantageous  alliance  for  his 
daughter,  and  refused  her  to  the  poor  poet ;  a  sentiment  in  which  the  daughter, 
to  all  appearances,  heartily  joined. 

It  is  interesting  to  think  of  this  poverty-stricken  family  rejecting  Burns,  even 
after  matters  had  gone  thus  far,  on  account  of  his  lack  of  wealth,  when  he  had  at 
that  very  time,  in  his  little  desk,  poems  for  which  the  world  has  since  paid  millions 
of  pounds.  But  the  future  is  often  unseen,  even  by  those  highest  in  learning  and 
deepest  in  wit  ;  and  it  is  little  wonder  that  the  unsophisticated  family  were  un- 
able to  know  even  the  pecuniary  value  of  our  young  ploughman's  brain. 

Discouraged  and  depressed  the  young  poet  resolved  on  emigrating  to  Ja- 
maica, as  book-keeper  of  a  wealthy  planter.  In  order  to  procure  the  money  with 
which  to  pav  the  expenses  of  his  journey,  and  no  doubt  partly  in  pursuance  of 
the  plan  made  that  day  in  the  garden,  he  decided  to  publish  a  small  volume,  by 
subscription,  which  he  did,  at  Kilmarnock,  in  July,  1 786,  having  as  the  title-page 
of  the  book,  "  Poems,  Chiefly  in  the  Scottish  Dialect ;  by  Robert  Burns."  It 
will  be  seen  that  he  now  dropped  the  fifth  and  sixth  letters  from  the  name  inher- 
ited of  his  father,  and  the  boy  Burness  became  the  man  Burns. 

This  book  achieved  immediate  and  unexpected  success ;  and  having  realized 
a  few  pounds  from  its  profits.  Burns  set  out  for  Greenock,  where  he  was  to  take 
8 


114  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

ship  for  his  new  West  Indian  home.  But  his  poems  had  attracted  so  much  at- 
tention, and  had  been  the  cause  of  such  commendation,  that  he  was  finally  en- 
couraged to  stay  and  enjoy  some  of  the  fruits  of  his  genius,  which  the  world  was 
now  beginning  to  discover. 

In  November  of  the  same  year,  encouraged  by  verbal  praises  and  written 
commendations,  some  of  them  all  the  way  from  the  literary  centre  of  Edinburgh, 
he  journeyed  to  that  city,  where  he  was  received  with  great  cordiality  by  many  of 
the  leading  people,  and  urged  to  issue  a  second  edition  of  his  poems,  which  he 
did  in  April  of  the  ensuing  year.  It  was  sold,  like  the  first  one,  by  subscription, 
and  netted  the  author  a  much  larger  sum  ;  while  it  procured  him  fame,  all  through 
the  country,  as  "  The  Ploughman  Poet." 

During  this  year  he  took  several  tours  in  different  parts  of  his  native  Scot- 
land, in  company  with  congenial  spirits,  once  going  a  very  little  way  into  Eng- 
land. He  was  received  gladly  and  hospitably  everywhere  by  those  who  had  read 
and  admired  his  poems.  His  journals  and  letters  during  that  period,  probably 
upon  the  whole  the  most  happy  in  his  life,  teem  with  accounts  of  courtesies, 
hospitalities,  merry-makings,  and  gallantries,  which  he  mentions  as  taking  place 
all  along  the  route.  His  poetic  pen  never  seems  to  have  remained  idle  very  long 
at  a  time  ;  and  albums,  fly-leaves,  note-books,  letters,  and  sometimes  window- 
panes,  received  in  turn  his  quaint  and  fiery  verses. 

In  October  he  returned  to  Edinburgh,  where  he  remained  for  some  time, 
filling  social  engagements,  entangling  himself  in  certain  affairs  of  the  heart,  and 
endeavoring  to  get  a  settlement  with  his  publisher,  whom  he  considered  as  owing 
him -the  immediate  payment  of  a  considerable  sum  of  money.  He  also  assisted 
a  compiler  in  making  collections  of  old  Scottish  songs,  and  in  furnishing  new 
words  to  old  airs.  It  is  a  singular  fact,  that  while  Burns  was  willing  to  earn 
money  with  the  regular  edition  of  his  poems,  he  steadfastly  declined  remuneration 
for  his  songs,  claiming  that  he  did  the  work  for  love. 

With  the  natural  Scotch  thrift  of  his  fathers,  he  soon  decided  that  he  must 
have  some  more  substantial  occupation  than  that  of  a  poet,  and  he  applied  for 
and  received  a  position  in  the  Excise.  To  add  to  his  income  he,  in  1788,  leased 
a  farm  on  the  river  Nith,  about  twelve  miles  from  Dumfries.  The  place  con- 
tained one  hundred  acres,  and  was  stated  to  be  "more  the  choice  of  a  poet  than 
of  a  farmer."  Its  fine  situation  and  beautiful  views  compensated,  perhaps,  in 
Burns's  mind,  for  its  sterility. 

Here  he  brought  his  wife,  Jean  Armour,  whom  he  had  married  under  such  un- 
pleasant circumstances  a  few  years  before,  and  to  whom  he  was  drawn  again  as 
much  by  pity  as  by  love,  her  parents  having  turned  her  out  of  doors.  It  is 
hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  parents  received  him  with  open  arms,  now  that 
he  came  with  some  signs  of  prosperity  ;  and  he  no  doubt  entered  anew  upon 
married  life  with  their  sincere,  if  somewhat  tardy,  blessing. 

Upon  this  farm  of  "  Ellisland  "  Burns  lived  three  years,  and  during  that  time 
he  had  three  occupations — farmer,  poet,  and  excise  officer.  In  the  last-named 
he  was  in  the  habit  of  riding  two  hundred  miles  per  week,  to  different  points 


ROBERT   BURNS  115 

throughout  the  county.  He  wrote  considerably,  but  perhaps  not  so  well  as  if  he 
had  not  been  hurried  and  worried  by  practical  affairs.  As  an  officer  he  is  gener- 
ally admitted  to  have  been  thorough,  correct,  and  at  the  same  time  humane  ;  as 
a  farmer,  he  again  failed,  and  in  1791  sold  back  the  lease  of  his  place,  pocketed, 
it  is  said,  a  loss  of  ^300,  and  moved  with  his  family  to  Dumfries.  Here  he  took 
up  the  plan  of  living  entirely  upon  his  salary  from  the  Government — £jo  per  an- 
num. This  would  seem  a  meagre  stipend  now  ;  but  it  would  at  that  time  have 
enabled  Burns  to  support  his  family  in  comfort,  though  not  in  the  way  his  abil- 
ities entitled  him  to  do.  His  position  gave  him  some  perquisites,  and  he  had 
the  hope  of  an  advance  in  his  salary,  which  would  follow  a  looked-for  promotion 
to  the  office  of  supervisor.  He  spent  his  time  in  the  performance  of  his  duties, 
in  collecting  and  writing  songs  for  the  above-mentioned  compilation  of  Scottish 
melodies,  and  in  meeting  and  conversing  with  the  many  friends  whom  his  genius 
and  geniality  drew  around  him. 

But  his  hopes  and  his  health  gradually  failed  together.  Dumfries  was  on  one 
of  the  great  stage  lines  that  led  to  and  from  London,  and  it  was  often  invaded 
by  tourists  who  were  intent  on  "  making  a  night  of  it  "  with  the  well-known 
peasant-poet.  In  these  bouts,  in  which  he  was  generally  willing  to  recite  his 
poems  and  sing  his  songs,  he  received  much  pleasure  and  applause,  but  nothing 
else,  save  the  wear  and  tear  of  dissipation.  His  habit  of  outspoken  opinion,  in 
political  and  other  matters,  proved  obstacles  to  his  advancement  in  the  public  ser- 
vice ;  he  fell  gradually  into  debt,  despondency,  and  disease — a  mournful  trio  of 
companions  for  the  most  brilliant  of  Scottish  poets  !  "  An  old  man  before  his 
time,"  he  lay  down  to  die,  in  1 796,  having  lived,  as  time  is  counted,  only  thirty- 
seven  short  years. 

The  fame  of  this  great  and  unfortunate  poet  has  increased  since  his  death  ; 
Scotchmen  everywhere  thrill  with  pride  when  Burns's  magic  name  is  spoken,  and 
the  world  in  general  has  a  sincere  love  for  the  warm-hearted,  plain-spoken  bard, 
who  turned  his  own  soul  to  the  gaze  of  his  fellow-beings,  that  they  might  the 
better  know  their  own.  The  space  of  this  article  will  not  permit  even  an  enum- 
eration of  his  wonderful  poems  ;  the  world  may  almost  be  said  to  know  them  by 
heart.  His  "Cotter's  Saturday  Night,"  "  Tam  O'Shanter,"  "Bonnie  Doon," 
"Auld  Lang  Syne,"  "  Bruce's  Address,"  "A  Man's  a  Man  for  a'  That,"  and 
many  others  that  might  be  named,  are  likely  to  live  for  generation  after  genera- 
tion ;  and  his  character  as  a  man,  although  subject  in  many  respects  to  severe 
criticism,  can  always  be  covered  with  a  mantle  of  loving  charity,  when  we  re- 
member his  generosity  of  heart,  his  manly  independence  of  spirit,  his  natural 
nobility  of  mind,  and  consider  the  difficult  circumstances  and  terrible  tempta- 
tions that  encompassed  his  stormy  life. 


116 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


SCHILLER* 

By  B.  L.  Farjeon 
(1759-1S05) 

IT  is  a  common  belief,  and  a  common  error,  tliat  clever 
children  seldom  become  illustrious,  and  though  we  have 
instances  of  youthful  dullards  who  have  ripened  into  fame, 
they  are  rare  in  comparison  with  those  who  in  early  youth 
have  given  some  indications  of  future  renown.  Of  these  last 
Germany's  favorite  bard  is  one.  Born  in  the  little  village 
of  Marbach,  in  the  duchy  of  Wiirtemberg,  on  November  10, 
1759,  he,  when  a  child,  evinced  proofs  of  remarkable  imag- 
inative and  creative  power.  At  as  early  an  age  as  si.x  he 
showed  that  he  possessed  a  fearless  nature  and  an  inquiring 
mind.  A  terrific  storm  was  raging,  and  his  parents  searched 
for  him  in  vain  ;  the  vivid  lightning  and  the  crashing  thunder  increased  their 
anxiety,  but  they  could  find  no  trace  of  the  child.  At  length,  when  the  storm 
was  over,  he  was  seen  to  descend  from  the  topmost  branches  of  a  great  lime-tree 
near  the  house.  They  rushed  toward  him  and  inquired  why  he  had  selected  so 
dangerous  a  refuge.  "  I  wanted  to  see,"  he  replied,  with  an  intrepid  air,  "where 
all  the  fire  came  from."  Even  at  this  period  he  found  his  favorite  reading  in  the 
prophetic  books  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  it  was  probably  from  Ezekiel  that  he 
derived  his  inspiration  for  Franz  Moor's  dream  in  "The  Robbers."  His  mother 
taught  him  to  read,  and  the  stories  she  related  to  him  were  listened  to  with  avid- 
ity ;  she  was  his  closest  companion  and  friend,  and  from  her  he  inherited  the 
gifts  which  made  his  name  a  household  word  in  every  home  in  Germany.  He 
was  brought  up  in  a  religious  and  scholarly  household.  Prayers  twice  a  day, 
regular  attendance  at  church,  the  study  of  Greek  and  Latin  already  commenced 
— these  were  his  principal  occupations  at  seven  years  of  age,  when  other  lads 
were  playing  about  the  fields.  From  his  father  he  also  inherited  the  literary  in- 
stinct. The  elder  Schiller,  at  the  time  his  son  was  born,  was  a  lieutenant  in  the 
service  of  the  dissolute  and  tyrannical  Duke  of  Wiirtemberg,  and  was  subse- 
quently appointed  governor  of  the  palace  of  Solitude.  He  was  a  struggling 
man,  and  often  felt  the  pinch  of  poverty.  Nine  books  composed  his  library, 
among  them  "  Erkenntniss  Sein  Selbst "  and  a  Wurtemberg  "  Hymnal."  During 
the  performance  of  his  duties  in  Solitude  he  wrote  a  treatise  on  the  cultivation  of 
trees,  which  was  very  favorably  received.  Young  Schiller's  poetic  instinct  dis- 
played itself  on  his  tenth  New- Year,  when  he  greeted  his  father  in  German  verse, 
to  which  he  attached  a  translation  in  Latin.  His  taste  for  the  stage  also  found 
early  vent  in  the  construction  of  a  mimic  theatre  and  cardboard  characters,  with 
which  he  used  to  play  till  he  was  fourteen,  when  the  important  question  of  his 

•Copyright.  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


SCHILLER  117 

future  education  was  discussed  iii  family  council.  His  mother  wished  him  to  be 
placed  in  a  private  school  at  Tubingen,  and  his  father  was  not  averse  ;  but  the 
question  was  decided  by  the  despotic  Duke  Carl,  who  insisted  that  the  lad  should 
be  educated  in  the  military  academy  he  had  established  upon  his  estate,  a  few 
miles  from  Ludwigsburg,  and  which,  two  or  three  years  afterward,  was  transferred 
to  Stuttgart.  Thither,  therefore,  Schiller  was  sent  to  study  and  prepare  himself 
for  the  battle  of  life,  and  it  was  there  he  imbibed  that  contempt  for  servile  obedi- 
ence to  military  authority  which,  in  "  The  Robbers,"  gave  so  extraordinary  an 
impetus  to  revolutionary  ideas  in  his  native  country,  especially  in  the  minds 
of  the  young.  Slavish  discipline  was  the  law  in  the  academy  ;  the  scholars  wore 
a  militarv  uniform  ;  they  were  soldiers,  and  were  taught  to  obey  the  word  of 
command  ;  the  sword  and  the  drum  were  the  symbols  of  authority  ;  there  were 
stated  minutes  and  hours  not  only  for  important  duties,  but  for  the  smallest  ob- 
servances and  pleasures.  The  drum  heralded  the  pupils  to  church,  summoned 
them  to  their  meals,  announced  when  they  were  to  begin  to  play  and  when  to 
leave  off,  dismissed  them  to  bed,  commanded  them  to  rise. 

Schiller  writhed  under  this  discipline,  which,  to  those  who  yielded  patiently 
and  uncomplainingly,  might  have  been  a  death-blow  to  personal  independence. 
In  one  of  his  letters  to  a  young  friend  he  wrote,  "Do  not  imagine  that  I  shall 
bow  to  the  yoke  of  this  absurd  and  revolting  routine.  So  long  as  my  spirit  can 
assert  its  freedom  it  will  not  submit  to  fetters.  To  the  free  man  the  sight  of 
slavery  is  abhorrent  ;  to  calmly  survey  the  chains  by  which  he  is  bound  is  not 
possible.  My  soul  often  revolts  at  the  anticipation  of  punishment  in  cases  where 
I  am  satisfied  that  my  actions  are  reasonable."  The  masters  of  the  academy  had 
a  difficult  task  to  subdue  the  spirit  of  such  a  youth,  and  it  was  fortunate  for  liter- 
ature that  they  did  not  succeed.  The  poet's  wings  would  not  be  clipped,  and  in 
spite  of  the  restrictions  by  which  he  was  surrounded,  Schiller  pursued  his  imagi- 
native course,  and  found  time  to  feed  upon  the  poetry  he  adored.  To  Klopstock 's 
works  he  was  specially  indebted;  that  poet's  "Messiah"  and  Virgil's  "^neid  " 
may  be  said  to  have  been  the  first  solid  stones  in  the  foundation  upon  which  his 
fame  was  to  rest.  There  were,  it  is  true,  but  slight  traces  of  originality  in  a  poem 
he  wrote  at  this  period,  the  hero  of  which  was  the  prophet  Moses,  and  it  was  due 
to  the  religious  sentiment  by  which  he  was  powerfully  affected  through  Klop- 
stock's  works,  that  he  chose  such  a  subject.  It  had  been  decided  that  the  church 
was  to  be  his  career,  but  he  soon  abandoned  the  idea,  and  transferred  his  affec- 
tions to  medicine,  which  he  studied  assiduously,  without  neglecting  the  groove  to 
which  his  genius  was  leading  him  by  slow  but  sure  steps.  Gerstenberg's  great 
tragedy,  "  Ugolino,"  fell  by  chance  into  his  hands,  and  gave  him  a  new  impetus  ; 
"Goetz  von  Berlichingcn  "  fascinated  him;  and  then  came  a  revelation  from  a 
greater  poet  than  all,  Shakespeare,  whose  works  he  loved  and  revered  with  pas- 
sionate ardor,  and  to  emulate  whom  was  perhaps  the  greatest  ambition  of  his  life. 
He  was  seventeen  when  he  first  saw  himself  in  print.  He  wrote  a  poem  called 
"  Evening,"  which  he  sent  to  Haug's  "  Swabian  Magazine  ;"  it  possessed  no  par- 
ticular merit,  and  was  chiefly  remarkable  for  its  resemblance  to  the  works  he  had 


118  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

read  and  admired  ;  but  the  editor  spoke  of  it  in  terms  of  praise,  and  predicted  that 
its  author  would  become  an  honor  to  Germany.  He  wrote  in  secret,  and  was 
already  busy  sketching  "The  Robbers,"  and  writing  scenes  in  that  famous  drama; 
he  and  his  young  friends  used  to  meet  clandestinely  and  declaim  their  composi- 
tions, concealing  their  manuscripts  when  their  rooms  were  searched  and  in- 
spected by  the  ushers  and  masters.  He  suffered  intensely  in  his  friendships,  and 
his  letters  breathed  rather  the  spirit  of  a  man  who  had  lived  to  see  his  fondest 
idols  shattered,  than  that  of  a  youth  who  had  scarcely  reached  his  spring-time. 
In  his  criticisms  upon  himself  he  was  unsparingly  harsh,  and  long  after  "The 
Robbers "  had  been  declared  to  be  a  work  of  the  highest  genius,  he  penned 
the  following  remarkable  condemnation  of  the  play  :  "  An  extraordinary  mistake 
of  nature  doomed  me,  in  my  birthplace,  to  be  a  poet.  An  inclination  for  poetry 
was  an  offence  against  the  laws  of  the  institution  in  which  I  was  educated.  For 
eight  years  my  enthusiasm  had  to  struggle  with  militar}'  discipline ;  but  a  passion 
for  poetry  is  strong  and  ardent  as  first  love.  It  only  served  to  inflame  what  it 
was  designed  to  extinguish.  To  escape  from  things  that  were  a  torment  to  me 
my  soul  expatiated  in  an  ideal  world  ;  but,  unacquainted  with  the  real  world,  from 
which  I  was  separated  by  iron  bars — unacquainted  with  mankind,  for  the  four 
hundred  fellow-creatures  around  me  were  but  one  and  the  same  individual,  or 
rather  faithful  casts  from  the  same  model  which  plastic  nature  solemnly  disowned 
— unacquainted  with  the  passions  and  propensities  of  independent  agents,  for 
here  only  one  arrived  at  maturity  (one  that  I  shall  not  now  mention) — unac- 
quainted with  the  fair  sex,  for  it  is  well  known  that  the  doors  of  this  institution 
are  not  open  to  females,  except  before  they  begin  to  be  interesting  and  when 
they  have  ceased  to  be  so — my  pencil  could  not  but  miss  that  middle  line  be- 
tween angels  and  devils,  and  produce  a  monster,  which  fortunately  had  no  exist- 
ence in  the  world,  and  to  which  I  wish  immortality  merely  that  it  may  serve  as  a 
specimen  of  the  issue  engendered  by  the  unnatural  union  of  subordination  and 
genius.  I  allude  to  '  The  Robbers.'  The  whole  moral  world  had  accused  the 
author  of  high  treason.  He  has  no  other  excuse  to  offer  than  the  climate  under 
which  this  piece  was  born.  If  any  of  the  numberless  censures  launched  against 
'  The  Robbers  '  be  just,  it  is  this,  that  I  had  the  presumption  to  delineate  men 
two  years  before  I  knew  anything  about  them."  He  was  but  twenty-one  when 
"  The  Robbers  "  appeared  in  print  and  was  produced  upon  the  stage,  and  while 
he  was  hailed  on  all  sides  as  the  German  Shakespeare,  he  lived  in  want  and  ex- 
treme privation. 

Duke  Carl  was  deeply  incensed  by  the  patriotic  and  independent  sentiments 
of  the  poet,  and  he  sent  an  official  mandate  to  Schiller,  ordering  him  to  discon- 
tinue all  further  literary  work  and  composition.  To  disobey  the  despotic  com- 
mand and  to  remain  in  the  Duke's  service,  would  have  entailed  imprisonment. 
He  resolved  upon  flight  from  Solitude,  and  on  the  night  following  that  on  which 
"  The  Robbers"  was  being  enacted  for  the  first  time  in  Hamburg  to  a  crowded 
and  enthusiastic  audience,  he  fled,  with  a  friend,  from  his  fatherland  to  pursue  his 
eventful  and  turbulent  career.     A  description  of  his  appearance  at  this   period  is 


SCHILLER  119 

extant :  "  He  was  cramped  into  a  uniform  of  the  old  Prussian  cut,  that  on  army 
surgeons  had  an  even  uglier,  stiffer  look  ;  his  little  military  hat  barely  covered  his 
crown,  behind  which  hung  a  long  queue,  while  round  his  neck  was  screwed  a 
horse-hair  stock  several  sizes  too  small.  More  wondrous,  however,  was  the  nether 
part  of  him.  Owing  to  the  padding  of  his  long,  white  gaiters,  his  legs  seemed 
thicker  at  the  calf  than  at  the  thigh.  Moving  stiffly  about  in  these  blacking- 
stained  gaiters,  with  knees  rigid  and  unbent,  he  reminded  one  irresistibly  of  a 
stork."  Freed  now  by  his  own  bold  act  from  military  slavery,  Schiller  entered 
Mannheim  with  joyful  hopes.  With  the  manuscript  of  "  Fiesco  "  under  his  arm, 
he  called  upon  the  regisseur,  Meyer,  in  whose  house  he  read  two  acts  of  the  play 
before  a  company  of  actors.  His  hopes  were  speedily  dashed  to  the  ground  ;  when 
he  finished  reading  the  second  act  every  actor  but  one  had  left  the  room,  and 
Meyer  thrust  a  dagger  into  the  poet's  heart  by  declaring  that  "  Fiesco"  was  noth- 
ing but  high-flown  rubbish.  Having,  however,  heard  but  two  acts  of  the  play, 
and  probably  stirred  to  compassion  by  Schiller's  mournful  countenance,  the  re- 
gisseur requested  that  the  manuscript  should  be  left  with  him  ;  and  the  following 
morning  the  poet  was  compensated  for  the  intervening  night  of  misery,  by  hear- 
ing Meyer  proclaim  that  '.'  Fiesco"  was  a  masterpiece,  and  that  the  bad  effect  it 
had  produced  was  due  to  the  villainous  manner  in  which  Schiller  had  read  his 
verse.  Notwithstanding  this  favorable  opinion,  which  was  endorsed  by  others 
who  read  the  play,  it  was  with  great  difficulty  that  Schiller  succeeded  in  obtain- 
ing a  publisher  for  the  drama,  and  then  he  was  in  an  agony  to  see  the  public  criti- 
cisms upon  it.  Meanwhile  he  was  working  at  fever  heat  on  "Marie  Stuart" 
and  "  Don  Carlos."  Into  this  last  work  he  threw  all  his  heart  and  soul,  spurred 
on,  doubtless,  by  the  passion  of  love,  which  now  for  the  first  time  possessed  him. 
The  object  of  his  affectioVis  was  Charlotte  von  Wolzogen,  whom  he  had  met  in 
Stuttgart,  and  into  whose  society  he  was  now  thrown.  He  experienced  all  an 
ardent  lover's  joys  and  tortures.  "  It  is  fearful,"  he  wrote,  "to  live  apart  from, 
humanity,  without  some  sympathizing  soul  ;  yet  no  less  fearful  is  it  to  cling  to 
some  kindred  heart  from  which,  sooner  or  later,  in  a  world  where  nothing  stands 
sure,  one  must  wrench  oneself,  bleeding,  away."  On  January  lo,  1784,  he  was 
elected  a  member  of  the  Deutsche  Gesellschaft,  and  on  the  following  day  "  Fies- 
co" was  produced.  Its  first  representation  was  but  a  partial  success.  It  met 
with  more  favor  on  its  second  performance  on  the  i8th.  Its  third  representation 
was  less  favorable,  and  then  it  was  quietly  laid  aside.  His  suit  with  Charlotte  did 
not  prosper,  and  he  relinquished  the  hope  of  winning  her.  Fie  was  despondent 
and  in  debt.  He  owed  money  to  Charlotte's  mother  and  to  his  father  ;  but  he 
struggled  on,  and  in  the  latter  part  of  the  year  he  issued  a  prospectus  of  a  new 
journal,  "  Thalia,"  which  was  to  make  his  fortune — an  anticipation  which  was  not 
realized.  The  journal  was  to  be  published  six  times  a  year  ;  philosophy,  biogra- 
phy, literary  reviews,  and  dramatic  criticisms  were  to  be  its  leading  features  ;  and 
he  threw  himself  into  the  task  with  enthusiasm.  The  difficulties  he  encountered 
were  tremendous  ;  these,  with  his  love  affairs  (for  Charlotte  von  Wolzogen  was 
not  the  only  woman   upon  whom  he  set  his  affections),  the  labor  entailed  by 


120  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

"  Thalia,"  and  the  numberless  ideas  for  fresh  romance  with  which  his  brain  was 
teeming,  would  have  broken  down  most  men  ;  but  though  he  repined  at  reverses, 
he  rose  continually  superior  to  them.  Long  before  "Don  Carlos"  was  finished 
he  commenced  "  The  Ghostseer,"  in  which  he  intended  to  develop  an  idea  which 
had  originally  formed  the  scheme  of  "  Friedrich  Imhof."  His  life  was  a  kind  of 
fever  ;  with  his  ardent  friendships,  his  susceptible  passions,  his  pecuniary  anxieties, 
and  his  fertile  brain  forever  at  work,  he  knew  no  rest.  He  had  removed  to  Jena, 
the  capital  of  Saxe-Weimar,  and  at  that  time  the  literary  centre  of  Germany. 
The  Prince  Charles  Augustus  and  his  famous  mother,  the  Princess  Amalia,  made 
him  welcome  and  encouraged  him.  A  gleam  of  sunshine  now  shone  upon  him  ; 
and  he  saw  a  prospect  of  domestic  happiness.  He  fell  in  love  with  Charlotte  von 
Lengenfeld,  and  in  1789  they  were  engaged.  On  February  22,  1790,  the  fond 
couple  were  married  at  the  little  village  church  of  Wenigen-Jena.  It  was  a  sim- 
ple wedding.  "  We  spent  the  evening  in  quiet  talk  over  our  tea,"  wrote  Lotte, 
sixteen  years  after,  when  she  was  a  widow.  It  was  a  happy  union,  and  the 
honeymoon  was  short,  for  Schiller  had  no  time  for  idleness.  This  year  he  wrote 
his  "  History  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,"  and  had  the  satisfaction  of  hearing  it 
highly  praised  in  influential  quarters.  He  had  never  enjoyed  such  happiness  as 
now,  his  only  sorrow  in  the  early  months  of  his  marriage  arising  from  a  brief 
separation  from  his  wife,  who  had  to  go  to  Rudolstadt  for  her  mother's  birth- 
day. 

In  one  of  his  letters  to  her  he  says,  "  Your  dear  picture  is  ever  before  me  ; 
all  seems  to  speak  to  me  of  where  the  little  wife  walked,  and  My  Lady  Com- 
fort "  (Lotte's  sister,  Caroline)  "  sat  enthroned.  And  to  feel  that  my  hand  can 
always  reach  what  my  heart  would  have  near  it,  to  feel  that  we  are  inseparable, 
that  is  a  sense  which  I  unceasingly  foster  in  my  bosom,  finding  it  exhaustlcss 
and  ever  new."  Recognition  of  his  genius  came  from  all  sides,  from  Goethe, 
Wieland,  Korner ;  and  by  the  press  he  was  hailed  as  the  Shakespeare  of  Ger- 
many. He  needed  some  such  encouragement,  for  he  was  attacked  by  a  danger- 
ous illness,  which  was  aggravated  by  pecuniary  troubles  ;  had  it  not  been  for  his 
wife's  tender  care  he  could  scarcely  have  recovered,  and  it  was  well  for  him  and  for 
his  country  that  there  came  to  him  at  this  crisis  an  offer  from  the  Hereditary 
Prince  and  Count  von  Schimmelmann,  of  a  thousand  thalers  per  annum  for  three 
years,  in  order  that  he  might  obtain  the  rest  needed  for  his  restoration  to  health. 
"  I  am  freed  for  a  long  time,"  he  wrote  joyfully  to  his  dear  friend  Korner,  "  per- 
haps forever,  from  all  care."  To  the  generous  donor  he  said,  "  I  have  to  pav  mv 
debt,  not  to  you,  but  to  mankind.  That  is  the  common  altar  where  you  lay  down 
your  gifts  and  I  my  gratitude."  The  method  he  adopted  to  recruit  his  health 
was  to  begin  to  work  again.  The  French  National  Assembly  conferred  upon 
several  celebrated  foreigners  the  right  of  citizenship,  and  at  this  distance  of  time 
it  is  strange  to  read  the  name  of  the  German  Schiller  among  them.  Though 
seldom  free  from  suffering,  which  was  frequently  so  acute  that  he  spoke  of  it  as 
torture,  it  was  a  proof  of  his  indomitable  spirit  that  during  his  last  decade  he 
achieved  his  most  memorable  triumphs  ;  and  yet,  in  the  height  of  his  powers,  his 


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SCHILLER  121 

youthful  dread  returned  to  him,  and  he  expressed  a  doubt  whether  he  had  not 
mistaken  his  vocation.  The  encouragement  of  Goethe  went  far  to  sustain  him  ; 
between  these  two  great  poets  existed  a  warm  friendship,  and  Goethe  showed  his 
confidence  in  Schiller  by  asking  him  to  correct  "  Egmont  "  for  the  stage.  But 
still  he  desponded,  and  it  was  not  till  he  read  Goethe's  "  Wilhelm  Meister  "  that 
the  full  force  of  poetic  fervor  awoke  within  him.  "  Wallenstein  "  had  been  laid 
aside  ;  he  took  it  up  again  with  glowing  feelings  ;  he  wrote  "The  Glove"  and 
"The  Ring  of  Polycrates  ;  "  he  revised  "The  Ghostseer "  for  a  new  edition; 
and  later  on  he  had  the  joy  of  witnessing  a  masterly  performance  of  the  part  of 
Wallenstein  by  the  fine  actor,  Graff.  Following  his  great  dramatic  trilogy, 
"The  Camp  of  Wallenstein,"  "The  Piccolomini,"  and  "The  Death  of  Wallen- 
stein "  (the  English  rights  in  which  he  sold  to  Bell,  the  publisher,  for  ;^6o), 
Schiller  now  devoted  himself  to  "  Mary  Stuart  "  and  "  Macbeth,"  and  still  farther 
undermined  his  health  by  regularly  burning  the  midnight  oil.  On  May  14,  1790, 
"  Macbeth  "  was  performed,  and  received  with  tumultuous  applause  ;  three  days 
before  this  performance  he  had  read  to  the  players  the  first  four  acts  of  "  Mary 
Stuart,"  and  when  the  last  and  fifth  act  was  written  he  said  to  Korner,  "  I  am 
only  now  beginning  to  understand  my  trade."  Following  "  Mary  Stuart,"  he 
wrote  "The  Maid  of  Orleans,"  and  then  he  was  absorbed  in  what  is  perhaps  the 
greatest  of  his  works,  "William  Tell,"  the  first  reading  of  which  took  place  in 
Goethe's  house  on  March  6,  1804.  On  the  9th  it  was  rehearsed  at  the  theatre, 
and  on  the  very  next  day  he  commenced  a  new  drama,  "  Demetrius,  or,  The 
Bloody  Bridal  of  Moscow,"  thus  following  out,  as  indeed  he  had  done  through- 
out the  whole  of  his  career,  his  axiom  that  life  without  industry  was  valueless. 
"William  Tell  "  was  a  triumphant  success,  and  may  be  said  to  have  been  the 
last  leaf  in  his  laurel  wreath,  for  he  was  destined  not  to  live  long  after  this 
great  triumph.  On  May  9,  1805,  he  died,  at  the  early  age  of  forty-six,  and  all 
Germany  mourned  the  loss.  "  Dear  good  one  ! "  he  said  to  his  devoted  wife, 
fondling  her  hand  and  kissing  it  the  day  before  his  death.  It  is  recorded  that 
in  his  last  hours  he  spoke  of  hearing  in  his  dreams  the  pealing  of  a  bell.  It 
may  be  that  his  own  beautiful  poem,  "The  Song  of  the  Bell,"  was  in  his  mind, 
and  that,  with  the  conviction  that  death  was  nigh,  the  fancy  was  inspired  by  the 
lines  in  his  poem  : 

"And  as  the  strains  die  on  tlie  ear  , 

Thiat  it  peals  forth  with  tuneful  might, 
So  let  it  teach  that  nought  lasts  here, 
That  all  things  earthly  take  their  flight." 


si.% 


122 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


GOETHE* 

Bv  Rev.  Edward  Everett  Hale 


(1749-1832) 


J' 


OHANN  Wolfgang  Goethe  was  born  on 

August   28,    1749,  at    Frankfort-on-the- 

Main,   one  of  the  free  cities  of  Germany. 

He  died  in  Weimar,  in  Saxony,  at  the  age 

of  eighty-two,  on  March  22,  1832. 

In  any  classification  of  the  men  of  his 
time  it  is  impossible  to  rank  him,  especially, 
among  men  of  letters  generally,  or  as  a 
poet,  or  as  a  naturalist.  He  is  especially 
what  our  time  is  fond  of  calling  "  an  all- 
round  man."  But  he  differs  from  most 
men  who  are  thus  praised,  because  he  is  the 
acknowledged  leader  of  the  thought  of  the 
first  half  of  the  century.  He  does  equally 
well  all  that  he  does.  If  in  the  year  1850 
anyone  had  asked  who  was  the  first  poet  of 
the  preceding  half  century,  Goethe  would 
have  been  named  by  almost  all  who  an- 
swered. If  you  had  asked  who  was  the  first  man  of  letters,  he  would  have  been 
named  by  all.  It  was  certain  that  his  philosophy  of  human  life  affected  the 
thought  of  the  students  and  scholarly  people  of  Europe  and  America  more  than 
that  of  any  other  author  of  his  time.  Indeed,  to  this  hour,  many  an  humble  lis- 
tener or  reader  receives  suggestions,  from  the  pulpit  or  the  newspaper,  of  which 
he  does  not  know  the  origin,  but  w'hich  are  in  truth  born  from  some  suggestion 
of  Goethe. 

It  is  natural  to  attempt  to  account  for  so  remarkable  a  man,  in  a  measure  at 
least,  by  tracing  back  his  genealogy.  Goethe  himself  gave  some  attention  to  the 
study  of  his  ancestry,  and  his  biographers  have  worked  at  it  faithfully.  But  their 
work  gives  no  confirmation  to  the  doctrines  of  heredity  which  are  so  well  sup- 
ported in  other  lives.  His  father,  Johann  Caspar  Goethe,  was  a  respectable  mem- 
ber of  the  city  government  of  Frankfort,  with  the  title  of  imperial  councillor. 
He  had  a  craving  for  knowledge,  a  delight  in  communicating  it,  a  love  of  order, 
and  a  certain  stoicism,  which  appear  in  his  son.  But  there  is  no  ray  of  genius  ap- 
parent in  him.  His  father  was  a  respectable  tailor  in  the  city  of  Frankfort,  named 
Frederick.  Frederick's  father  was  a  farrier  or  blacksmith  in  Thuringia,  named 
Hans  Christian  Goethe.  In  neither  of  these  ancestors  is  found  any  germ  of  the 
poet's  genius. 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


GOETHE  123 

On  the  other  hand,  the  successful  life  of  Wolfgang  von  Goethe  is  one  more 
instance,  in  a  large  number  afforded  in  the  history  of  the  last  two  centuries,  which 
show  that  a  good  education  under  prosperous  circumstances,  with  the  appliances 
which  tend  to  health  of  body,  mind,  and  soul,  is  a  very  fortunate  help  to  native 
genius,  when  native  genius  finds  itself  in  such  surroundings.  In  the  imperial  coun-' 
cillor's  house  his  son  had  every  comfort.  He  was  surrounded  by  pictures  books, 
medals,  and  other  works  of  art.  His  reasonable  wishes  could  all  be  gratified.  And 
he  knew  none  of  the  hardships  which,  if  they  are  sometimes  the  stimulus  of 
genius,  more  often  make  its  penance. 

To  his  mother  he  seems  to  have  owed  more  of  tlie  qualities  which  have  made 
him  distinguished.  He  says  himself  that  his  love  of  story-telling  came  from  her. 
and  his  happy  disposition.  She  taught  him  how  he  could  find  the  good  which 
is  in  everyone,  and  her  own  habit  was  to  leave  people's  vices  to  the  God  who 
made  them.  Much  more  than  this,  Goethe  had  at  home  the  blessing,  which  can- 
not be  overestimated,  of  the  presence  of  a  sister  who  shared  in  his  tastes,  who 
joined  in  his  studies,  and  whom  he  loved  with  a  passionate  affection.  He  could 
pour  out  his  enthusiasms  to  her  ;  she  poured  out  hers  to  him.  So  that  both  of 
them  were  blessed  through  their  childhood  in  that  greatest  of  blessings,  a  happy 
home. 

He  was  a  precocious  boy,  and  his  father  and  mother  both  observed  his  re- 
markable abilities.  There  was  no  lack  of  good  teachers  in  Frankfort,  and  he 
was  well  trained  in  the  classics  in  early  life.  He  also  studied  Hebrew  at  the 
same  time,  having  the  advantage  of  the  instruction  of  learned  Jews  who  lived  in 
Frankfort.  There  never  was  any  question  but  that  he  should  go  to  the  univer- 
sitv.  His  father's  wish  was  that  he  should  enter  upon  the  career  of  what  he 
would  have  called  jurisprudence.  With  this  view  some  of  the  younger  Goethe's 
earlier  studies  were  conducted.  But,  before  he  was  old  enough  to  take  any  very 
decided  steps  in  the  profession  of  law,  his  determination  to  follow  a  wider  liter- 
ary career  became  so  evident  that  the  plan  of  jurisprudence  was  eventually  en- 
tirely abandoned. 

When  he  was  sixteen  years  old  he  went  to  Leipsic,  and  entered  at  the  uni- 
versity there,  in  the  month  of  October,  1 765.  The  university  was  classed  in  the 
"  Four  Nations,"  as  they  were  called — the  Misnian,  the  Saxon,  the  Bavarian,  and 
the  Polish.  Goethe  was  from  Frankfort,  and  was  classed  as  a  Bavarian.  His 
father  left  him  wide  freedom  in  the  choice  of  subjects  and  teachers,  and  though 
he  attended  some  lectures  which  bore  on  subjects  of  jurisprudence,  he  was  more 
interested  in  the  wider  range  of  natural  science  and  of  general  literature.  It 
would  seem  that  he  learned  more  from  the  people  around  him  in  whose  society 
he  was  intimately  thrown  than  from  his  professors.  He  tried  his  hand  in  fine 
art,  occupied  himself  in  drawing,  and  even  in  engraving.  Although  the  three 
years  spent  in  Leipsic  show  but  little  which  is  remarkable  in  any  scientific  course 
of  study,  it  is  quite  clear  that  he  laid  foundations  here  which  were  of  use  to  him 
in  all  his  future  life.  But  at  the  end  of  three  years  his  health  was  seriously  af- 
fected.    He  was  depressed  in  hypochondria,  and  was  physically   ill.     He  was 


124  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

*'  destitute  of  faith,  yet  terrified  at  scepticism,"  and  he  returned  to  his  home  in 
1 768,  discouraged  and  physically  broken  down. 

But  a  year  and  a  half  of  the  regularity  of  home  life,  quite  different  from  his 
Bohemian  courses  at  the  university — a  life  inspired  by  his  mother's  and  his  sister's 
love — and  a  physical  life  sustained  by  a  home  diet  which  was  so  much  better  than 
a  student's  fare,  wholly  restored  him,  and  in  April,  1770,  he  went  to  the  Univer- 
sity of  Strasburg,  not  far  from  Frankfort,  now  with  the  real  purpose  of  studying 
jurisprudence.  He  was  nearly  twenty-one  years  old,  in  stature  rather  above  the 
middle  size,  and  because  his  presence  was  imposing  he  was  generally  spoken  of 
as  tall  ;  but  he  was  not  really  a  tall  man,  but  gave  this  impression  by  his  erect 
carriage  and  because  his  bust  was  large.  Long  before  he  was  celebrated,  he  was 
called  an  Apollo. 

At  Leipsic  he  had  led  the  life  of  a  boy.  At  Strasburg  he  knew  men  and  en- 
tered on  the  interests  of  a  man.  Herder  was  there,  whose  reputation  as  a  man 
of  letters  and  a  scholar,  in  after  times,  was  to  be  in  that  great  second  class  which 
would  have  been  the  first  class  but  that  there  Goethe  reigned  alone.  Herder  was 
at  Strasburg  to  undergo  an  operation  for  the  benefit  of  his  eyes.  Goethe  made  his 
acquaintance,  which  ripened  into  friendship,  and  Herder's  influence  on  the  young 
Apollo  was  of  the  very  best.  Goethe  remained  in  Strasburg  from  April,  1770, 
till  August,  1 771.  He  made  the  acquaintance  of  Frederike  Brion,  whose  father 
was  pastor  of  the  little  village  of  Sesenheim.  Frederike  was  a  fair,  sweet  girl  of 
sixteen,  and  Goethe  was  for  the  time  deeply  interested  in  her ;  but  she  was  to 
him  little  more  than  a  child,  and  when  he  left  Strasbourg  she  was  soon  forgotten. 
But  she  never  forgot,  and  years  after  died  unwedded.  Goethe  was  now  writing, 
with  the  versatility  and  the  enthusiasm  which  marked  all  his  literary  work.  Some- 
thing or  somebody  acquainted  him  with  the  history  of  Goetz  von  Berlichingen,  a 
name  then  little  known,  to  which  this  young  student  has  given  its  distinction. 

We  do  not  understand  Goethe  nor  the  enthusiasm  with  which  Germany  wel- 
comed his  earliest  printed  work,  if  we  do  not  see  how  it  was  connected  with  the 
hatred  of  conventionalism  and  of  mere  authority,  which  in  the  German  language 
was  called  Stiir-m  und  Drang.*  In  after  life  Goethe  had  none  too  much  of  en- 
thusiasm for  radical  reformers.  But  as  a  young  man,  he  breathed  the  atmosphere 
of  his  time.  In  the  same  way,  in  the  year  1773,  Schiller,  a  boy  only  fourteen 
years  old,  was  writing  verses  which  in  1778  he  wrought  into  "The  Robbers," 
appealing  to  all  the  enthusiasm  for  liberty  in  young  Germany. 

In  the  years  which  we  are  following,  the  young  men  of  America  were  solv- 
ing the  political  questions  and  preparing  for  the  military  struggles  of  the  Ameri- 
can Revolution.  France  was  in  the  glow  of  hope  which  made  even  Louis  XVI. 
himself  suppose  that  a  golden  age  was  come  again  for  Frenchmen.  In  England 
the  protest  against  form  and  authority  showed  itself  in  signs  as  easily  read  as  the 
letters  of  Junius  and  the  Wilkes  riots  in  London.  The  autocracy  attempted  by 
poor  George  III.,  in  an  attempt  which  cost  him  America,  was  only  the  most 

*  No  one  has  translated  this  phrase  well  into  English.  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  suggests  "  storm  and  stress." 
Drang  is  the  origin  of  our  word  throng,  and  implies  the  pressure,  rush,  and  common  purpose  of  a  crowd. 


GOETHE  AND  FREDERIKE. 


GOETHE  125 

absurd  imitation  of  the  despotism  of  Louis  XIV.  In  Germany,  the  revolt 
against  the  traditions  of  the  past  showed  itself  in  the  new  outburst  of  national 
literature.  Young  men  were  sick  of  the  sway  of  France  and  the  French  lan- 
guage, to  which  Frederick  even  had  been  so  subservient.  In  all  senses  Frederick 
was  now  a  very  old  lion — and  there  were  those  who  said  he  had  lost  his  teeth.  To 
be  German,  to  write  and  read  German,  to  recall  German  memories,  and  to  throw 
off  conventional  restraints  of  whatever  kind— such  was  the  drift  and  determina- 
tion of  the  movement  which  received  the  excellent  title  of  the  "  Sturm  und 
Drang." 

Soon  after  Goethe  left  Strasburg  he  printed  his  play  of  "  Goetz  von  Ber- 
lichingen."  The  hero  is  a  true  character  of  history.  He  was  born  about  the 
year  1480  and  died  in  1562.  His  life  had  been  published  in  1731,  and  Goethe 
made  the  drama  on  the  lines  of  the  true  history.  The  play  defies  all  the  "  unities  " 
of  the  French  drama,  like  the  plays  of  Shakespeare,  whom  all  the  young  Ger- 
mans were  reading  with  enthusiasm  ;  and  the  action  passes  from  place  to  place, 
and  from  year  to  year,  just  as  the  author  chooses.  The  whole  tendency  of  the 
drama  is  revolutionary,  and  as  Goetz  dies,  his  last  words  are:  "  Freedom  !  Free- 
dom !  "  His  wife  cries,  "  Only  above,  above  with  thee  !  The  world  is  a  prison- 
house."  His  sister  says,  "Gallant  and  gentle  !  Woe  to  this  age  that  has  lost 
thee ! "  And  the  last  words  of  the  play  are  :  "  And  woe  to  the  future  that  cannot 
know  thee." 

With  such  an  appeal  to  all  the  fresh  young  life  of  Germany,  the  young  author 
comes  before  the  world.  His  play  is  received  with  enthusiasm  and,  at  the  first 
step,  his  genius  is  recognized  by  his  countrymen. 

Before  it  was  published,  he  had  returned  to  Frankfort,  having  in  a  way  satis- 
fied his  father's  wishes  by  his  legal  studies,  and  his  career  for  his  future  calling  is 
to  begin  in  a  residence  at  Weslar.  This  was  the  seat  of  the  Court  of  Appeal  of 
the  old  German  Empire.  How  far  justice  was  really  promoted,  may  be  seen 
from  the  single  statement  that,  while  the  docket  of  cases  was  twenty  thousand 
behindhand  m  1772,  only  sixty  decisions  were  made  in  a  year.  In  what  was 
called  praxis  or  practice,  the  young  Goethe  was  placed  in  a  "  circumlocution 
office  "  like  Weslar.  There  is  something  ludicrous  in  the  position,  so  absurd  is  it. 
To  take  Schiller's  capital  figure,  it  is  indeed  Pegasus  in  harness. 

It  happened  that  in  this  formal  residence,  he  became  intimately  acquainted 
with  Charlotte  Buff  and  a  young  man  named  Kestncr,  to  whom  she  was  be- 
trothed. They  were  fond  of  him,  he  of  them,  and  he  shared  in  the  hospitalities 
of  their  new  home  after  they  were  married.  In  the  simple  life  of  Kestner  and 
Charlotte  Buff  and  in  the  suicide  of  a  young  man  named  Jerusalem,  whom  ihev 
all  knew,  he  found  the  details  for  the  picture  of  life  described  in  his  celebrated 
novel  called  the  "  Sorrows  of  Young  Werther,"  the  novel  most  remarkable  per« 
haps  of  modern  times,  if  its  influence  on  literature  and  society  be  regarded. 

In  the  characters  of  the  book,  Werther,  Lotte,  and  Albert  show  traits  which 
were  at  once  recognized  as  belonging  to  Goethe,  Charlotte  Buff,  and  Kestncr, 
But  it  must  not  be  understood  that  the  intricate  "elective  affinities"  of  the  novel 


126  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

really  describe  the  personal  relations  of  the  three.  To  young  readers  it  may  be 
said  that  the  transfer  of  the  scientific  term  "elective  afifinity,"  from  the  new 
chemistry  of  that  time,  to  the  language  of  the  affections,  was  first  made  in  this 
book.  It  was  afterward  dwelt  upon  in  the  novel  called  "  Elective  affinities." 
The  phrase  has  long  since  been  used,  now  in  ridicule  and  now  seriously,  quite  as 
much  in  discussions  of  the  working  of  the  human  heart  as  to  express  the  rela- 
tions of  acids  and  alkalies. 

It  would  be  very  hard  to  persuade  the  young  people  of  to-day  to  read  "The 
Sorrows  of  Werther."  It  would  be  hard  to  make  them  understand  that  for  a 
generation  of  men,  from  1774,  when  it  was  published,  until  this  century  was  well 
advanced,  people  of  sense  and  real  feeling  regarded  it  as  a  central  and  important 
book,  which  they  valued  because  it  had  awakened  them  and  given  them  strength. 
The  English  critics,  when  at  last  they  found  there  was  such  a  book,  were  con- 
tent to  laugh  at  its  exaggerated  sentiment.  In  truth,  as  Carlyle  has  well  said, 
"  '  Werther '  expressed  the  dim-rooted  pain  under  which  thoughtful  men  were 
languishing."  Europe  responded  to  "  Werther,"  because,  even  in  its  sentimental 
languishing,  it  expressed  this  pain.  America  was  finding  another  method  of  ex- 
pressing her  dissatisfaction  in  1774.  And  it  may  be  doubted  whether  from 
that  day  to  the  end  of  the  century,  a  copy  of  the  "Sorrows  of  Werther"  was 
heard  of  in  the  United  States,  unless  indeed  the  Baroness  Riedesel  soothed  with 
it  the  more  physical  sorrows  of  the  bivouacs  of  Saratoga,  or  the  barracks  of  her 
captivity. 

"Goetz  von  Berlichingen"  and  "Werther"  made  the  young  Goethe  one  of  the 
foremost  men  in  German  literature.  That  theory  of  his  boyhood,  that  he  was  to 
be  a  lawyer  or  jurisconsult,  could  be  maintained  no  longer  even  by  his  father. 
The  distinguished  men  of  letters  of  Germany  made  his  acquaintance,  and  it  mav 
be  said  that  their  company  lifted  him,  very  fortunately,  from  the  petty  society 
of  persons  inferior  to  him,  among  whom  he  was  a  dictator.  As  early  as  1774 
Goethe  had  conceived  the  idea  of  "  Faust,"  and  when  Klopstock  visited  him  at 
Frankfort,  in  that  year,  Goethe  read  to  him  some  fragments  of  thai.  poem. 

The  popularity  of  "  Werther"  was  such  that  it  was  read  by  people  of  all  ranks. 
Among  the  rest,  the  young  Duke  of  Saxe-Weimar,  Karl  August,  then  only  nine- 
teen years  old,  conceived  a  great  admiration  for  Goethe,  and  in  1774,  on  a  visit 
to  Frankfort,  with  his  bride,  he  invited  the  young  author  to  his  little  court  at 
Weimar.  Johann  Goethe,  the  father,  had  the  pride  of  a  magistrate  of  a  free 
city,  and  had  no  fancy  for  a  part  so  poor  as  that  which  Voltaire  had  played,  with- 
in his  memory,  at  the  court  of  King  Frederick.  But  the  office  was  tempting  to 
the  young  author,  and  he  accepted  the  invitation.  This  ended  in  his  receiving 
from  the  duke  a  home  at  Weimar  and  recognized  position.  To  those  who  study 
the  inducements  and  encouragements  of  authorship,  it  is  interesting  to  know  that 
through  all  the  success,  before  the  public  and  with  the  booksellers,  of  "Goetz  von 
Berlichingen  "  and  "  Werther,"  neither  book  had  paid  back  to  Goethe  the  money 
he  had  spent  for  their  publication.  Fame,  and  fame  only,  had  been,  thus  far,  his 
reward. 


GOETHE  127 

He  went  to  Weimar  as  the  friend  of  its  young  sovereign,  who  was  just  en- 
tering on  a  career  which  may  fairly  be  called  illustrious.  Weimar  was  and  is 
"  more  like  a  village  bordering  a  park  than  a  capital  with  a  court,  having  all 
courtly  environments."  The  representation  it  gave  of  the  formalities,  the  "  fuss 
and  feathers  "  of  a  court,  was  on  the  most  minute  scale.  But  with  a  certain  pride, 
well  understood,  a  German  historian  has  said,  that  after  Berlin  there  is  no  one  of 
the  countless  courts  of  Germany  of  which  the  nation  is  so  proud.  Such  pride  is 
born  from  the  distinction  which  this  grand  duke,  Karl  August,  gave  to  it,  by 
calling  into  what  was  called  his  service,  such  men  as  Klopstock,  Wieland,  Goethe, 
and  Schiller.  This  grand  duke  was  himself  a  remarkable  man  for  one  "  in  his 
unfortunate  position."  He  now  owes  all  the  place  he  has  in  history  to  the  fort- 
unate decision  by  which  he  offered  to  Goethe  a  home  in  the  little  city  of  Wei- 
mar, when  he  was  himself  a  boy. 

After  a  gay,  not  to  say  wild,  introduction  to  the  little  social  circle  of  this 
funny  little  court,  Goethe  settled  down  quite  seriously  to  the  work  which  be- 
longed to  a  member  of  the  administration.  He  had  accepted  the  post  of  Coun- 
sellor of  the  Home  Department,  with  a  seat  in  the  council.  This  carried  with  it 
a  yearly  salary  of  about  nine  hundred  of  our  dollars.  And  in  the  modest  habits 
of  that  little  court  this  seems  to  have  been  regarded  as  a  competency.  With 
this  income  it  is  certain  that  Goethe  kept  house,  fulfilled  the  demands  which 
etiquette  made  on  his  position,  and  remitted  a  sixth  part  of  his  money  to  a  poor, 
broken-winded,  and  apparently  worthless  author,  whose  very  name  is  unknown, 
who  maintained  with  him  a  begging  correspondence. 

Goethe  proved  himself  a  thorough  man  of  business  in  the  discharge  of  his 
official  duties.  His  interest  in  science  made  him  study  the  administration  of  the 
mines  of  the  duchy  with  care  and  in  detail,  and  when,  afterward,  he  gave  up  other 
official  cares,  he  retained  the  administration  of  the  Department  of  the  Mines.  To 
persons  studying  his  style  it  is  worthy  of  remark,  that  the  best  habits  of  a  man 
of  affairs  may  be  noted  all  through  his  work,  whether  scientific,  speculative,  poet- 
ical, or  indeed,  in  whatever  form  it  takes.  There  is  never  anything  which  a 
critic  of  our  time  would  call  "gush,"  or  "padding,"  or  "slip-slop."  He  advances 
on  his  purpose,  whatever  that  purpose  is,  with  the  directness  of  an  engineer  press- 
ing the  attack  of  a  fortress,  or  of  an  architect  making  the  specifications  for  a 
building. 

Meanwhile,  for  the  rela.xation  or  diversion  of  life,  there  was  a  passion,  more 
or  less  real,  which  bound  him  to  the  Baroness  von  Stein,  the  wife  of  the  Master 
of  the  Horse  ;  there  was  the  direction  of  the  theatre  and  music  of  the  court,  and 
occasional  journeys,  generally  incognito,  with  the  Duke  Karl  August.  A  favor- 
ite entertainment  was  in  private  theatricals,  which  were  indeed  the  rage  in  the 
little  circle.  The  duchess  acted,  and  everybody,  even  of  the  highest  rank,  was 
glad  to  be  enrolled  in  the  troupe,  which  was  directed  by  Goethe.  Eager  for  the 
applauses  of  other  audiences  than  the  favored  circle  at  Weimar,  the  company 
went  about,  almost  like  a  troupe  of  gypsies,  from  one  to  another  of  the  country 
homes  of  the  neighborhood.      In  all  our  modern  ridicule  of  the  Duchy  of   Pom- 


128  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

pernickel,  and  the  like,  it  is  liard  to  find  anything  more  absurd  than  these  ac- 
counts of  the  best  way  which  the  leaders  of  the  state  found  for  the  occupation 
of  their  time,  and  for  the  edification  of  their  people.  The  private  theatricals  of 
this  court,  however,  will  be  long  remembered,  because  the  rollicking  experiences 
of  these  parties,  which  were  a  sort  of  picnics  in  a  courtly  style,  give  the  frame- 
work, or  machinery  for  the  story  of  "  Wilhelm  Meister." 

This  famous  and  remarkable  book  was  begun  soon  after  Goethe  went  to 
Weimar.  But  it  was  not  published  until  1795,  after  Goethe  had  spent  more  than 
a  year  in  Italy,  a  period  which  marked  a  crisis  in  his  life.  In  ten  months'  hard 
study  of  painting  in  Rome,  he  satisfied  himself,  at  last,  that  he  should  never  be 
a  painter.  It  seems  strange  now  to  say,  that  until  then,  he  had  diligently 
nursed  the  hope  that  as  a  painter  he  should  achieve  great  success.  In  Italy  he 
looked  at  the  petty  court  of  Weimar  from  a  point  distant  enough  to  see  it  in 
its  true  relations  and  perspective.  He  measured  his  own  powers  as  a  man  does 
who  is  removed  from  the  petty  detail  of  small  official  duty.  And  he  returned  to 
Weimar  in  1788,  determining  wisely  to  give  the  rest  of  his  life  to  science  and 
literature.  The  "  determination  "  proved  to  be  a  determination.  And  from  this 
time,  his  life  as  a  master  of  the  thought  of  his  time  may  be  said  to  begin. 

He  had  received  from  the  grand  duke  a  title  of  nobility,  and  from  that  time 
he  is  "  von  Goethe,"  instead  of  "  Goethe  "  simple,  without  that  prefix  of  dignity. 
On  his  return  from  Italy  he  gave  up  all  his  official  work,  except  the  direction  of 
the  mines  and  of  the  theatre.  It  is  interesting  to  remember  that  Goethe  thus  di- 
rected the  work  of  the  mines  in  which  Luther's  father  had  been  a  workman.  His 
interest  in  natural  science  made  him  hold  this  position  ;  and  his  charge  of  the 
theatre  was  almost  a  matter  of  course  in  such  a  court  as  that  of  Weimar.  He 
was,  however,  relieved  from  the  presidency  of  the  council  and  from  the  direction 
of  the  War  Department.  The  duke  retained  for  him  a  place  in  the  council 
"  whenever  his  other  affairs  allowed  him  to  attend."  It  must  be  remembered  that 
all  such  appointments  were  made  wholly  at  the  wish  of  the  duke,  who  was  the 
absolute  monarch  of  this  little  state,  until  he  gave  to  his  people  a  liberal  consti- 
tution in  1 8 16. 

It  will  be  convenient  to  American  readers  to  remember  that  the  size  of  the 
duchy  is  about  the  same  as  that  of  the  State  of  Rhode  Island — about  fourteen 
hundred  square  miles.  In  Goethe's  time,  the  population  was  less  than  a  million. 
The  city  of  Weimar  had  about  ten  thousand  inhabitants.  To  Weimar  Goethe 
returned,  resolved  to  give  his  life,  from  that  time  forward,  to  science  and  litera- 
ture. Before  the  Italian  journey  he  had  done  so  in  large  measure.  But  after 
his  return,  relieved  from  almost  all  duties  of  administration,  he  brings  forward 
finished  works,  with  untiring  enthusiasm,  on  many  different  lines,  many  of  which 
are  among  the  masterpieces  of  the  time.  Schiller  had  come  to  Weimar  in  1 794. 
Goethe  and  he  had  met  before.  There  were  differences  between  these  men  so 
great  that  in  some  lines  they  had  no  sympathy.  All  the  more  is  it  to  the  credit 
of  both,  that  each  appreciated  the  other  and  that  they  lived  and  worked  together 
as  friends.     When  Schiller  proposed  the  literary  journal  called  The  Hours,  Goethe 


GOETHE  129 

co-operated  in  the  plan  most  cordially.  And  so  long  as  Schiller  lived,  their 
friendship  was  to  each  a  great  blessing.  Their  statues,  representing  them  hand 
in  hand,  commemorate  this  friendship  to  this  day. 

The  closing  books  of  "  Wilhelm  Meister"  were  written  in  Italy,  and  after 
Goethe's  return,  and  the  book  was  published  in  i  795.  Goethe  had  long  since 
outlived  the  extravagance  of  sentimentalism  which  overflowed  in  "Werther." 
He  had  himself  ridiculed  it  in  a  little  farce,  much  laughed  at  at  the  time.  And 
if  "Wilhelm  Meister"  were  taken  merely  as  a  story,  it  would  be  found  quite  free 
from  such  extravagances.  The  story,  however,  is  simply  the  framework  for  crit- 
icism on  art,  on  literature,  and  especially  for  what  may  be  called  studies  on  edu- 
cation. The  criticism  on  "  Hamlet"  has  been  called  the  best  of  the  thousands 
upon  thousands  of  which  "  Hamlet"  has  been  the  subject.  No  book  of  Goethe's 
has  had,  or  has  held,  the  interest  of  the  great  world  of  "  general  readers,"  as  "  Wil- 
helm Meister,"  "Faust"  not  excepted. 

"  Hermann  and  Dorothea  "  appeared  in  i  797,  and  was  one  of  the  most  serious 
of  the  efforts  by  which  Goethe  and  Schiller  both  gave  themselves  to  create  a  Ger- 
man drama  worthy  of  the  German  people.  In  1790  a  new  theatre  tiad  been  built 
at  Weimar,  and  Goethe  became  in  fact  the  manager.  He  was  not  satisfied  with 
writing  plays  to  be  performed  there  :  he  actually  supervised  the  performances, 
and  gave  to  the  detail  of  such  management  much  of  his  time  for  many  years. 
So  long  as  Schiller  lived  the  two  were  closely  connected  in  all  such  enterprises, 
and  Goethe's  practical  connection  with  the  theatre  led  him,  perhaps,  to  at- 
tempt the  dramatic  form  of  composition  more  often  than  he  would  otherwise 
have  done. 

In  1799  Walter  Scott,  then  only  twenty-five  years  of  age,  published  in  Edin- 
burgh his  translation  of  "  Goetz  von  Berlichingen." 

It  must  be  remembered  that  all  this  time  Goethe  is  pursuing  his  studies  of 
Physical  Science.  His  little  book  called  "  Morphologic,"  published  in  1788,  im- 
mediately after  his  return  from  Italy,  is  a  simple,  unaffected,  practical,  statement 
of  the  law  of  growth  of  plants,  which,  though  suggested  before,  had  quite  es- 
caped the  attention  of  the  botanists  of  repute.  When  it  was  published,  it  seems 
to  have  been  pushed  aside  as  the  fanciful  dream  of  a  poet.  In  truth,  it  is  a  book 
which  might  be  given  to-dav  to  a  learner,  as  one  of  the  most  elegant  and  simple 
illustrations  of  what  is  now  meant  by  evolution  in  nature.  From  the  humble  re- 
sources of  a  common  garden  Goethe  finds  material  to  show  how  whorls  of  leaves 
appear  as  blossoms  ;  how  calyx  passes  into  corolla  ;  how  leaves  of  the  corolla  be- 
come stamens  and  pistils.  After  a  generation  the  botanists  were  willing  enough 
to  accept  the  statement,  and  Goethe  lived  long  enough  to  see  it  accepted  as  the 
foundation  of  the  Botanical  Science  of  his  time. 

The  critics  are  apt  to  call  "  Faust "  his  greatest  work.  The  first  part  was 
published  in  1805,  the  second  in  1831.  Quite  too  much  fijtcssc  has  been  wasted 
on  endeavors  to  discover  his  purpose  in  the  poem.  It  will  live,  not  from  any 
discovery  of  his  purpose,  but  because  of  the  intensity  with  which  it  presents  the 
different  characters.      It  will  command  and  control  men   all  the  more,  because 

9 


130 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


they  do  not  find  in  it  the  skeleton  of  what  is  called  an  artistic  or  scientific  literary 
plan.  It  is  impossible,  in  the  limited  range  of  this  article,  even  to  name  the  several 
works,  many  of  them  of  great  importance,  of  the  last  half  of  his  life.  With  his 
assiduous  industry,  so  assiduous  that  he  was  never  satisfied,  perhaps,  unless  he 
was  at  work,  he  edited  an  art  journal,  Knnst  und  Altcrtluim,  from  1816  to 
1828.  In  a  thousand  methods  of  publication  he  sent  out  poems,  dramas,  novels, 
and  pamphlets.  He  had  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  Europe  and  America 
regarded  him  as  the  first  author  of  his  time. 

Goethe  married,  in  1806,  Christiana  Vulpius,  who  had  been  employed  as  a 
servant  in  his  family.  She  died  in  the  year  18 16.  He  seems  to  have  really  la- 
mented her  death. 

His  old  age  was  serene.  The  jubilee  of  his  arrival  in  Weimar  was  celebrated 
with  great  enthusiasm,  on  November  7,  1S25.  All  through  the  last  years  of  his 
life  he  was  receiving  tokens  of  admiration  from  all  parts  of  the  world.  They 
gratified  his  vanity,  and  satisfied  his  pride. 

He  died  on  March  22,  1832.     His  last  words  have  been  well  remembered: 


"  More  light ! " 


SIR  WALTER  SCOTT 

By  W.  C.  Taylor,  LL.D. 
(1771-1832) 


T' 


^HE  life  of  an  author  who  took  no  ac- 
tive part  in  public  affairs,  but  sent 
forth  from  his  own  fireside  those  marvels 
of  imagination  which  have  afforded  delight 
and  instruction  to  millions,  furnishes  inter- 
est of  a  different  kind  from  the  biographies 
of  those  whose  names  are  associated  with 
great  events.  We  look  more  to  the  man 
than  to  his  age ;  we  endeavor  to  trace  the 
circumstances  by  which  his  mind  was 
moulded  and  his  tastes  formed,  and  we 
feel  anxious  to  discover  the  connection 
between  his  literary  and  his  personal  his- 
tory and  character.  There  have  been  few 
authors  in  whose  career  this  connection 
was  more  strongly  apparent  than  in  Sir  Walter  Scott  ;  his  life  is,  to  a  great 
extent,  identified  with  his  writings,  and  this  appears  to  be  the  source  of  that  feel- 


SCOTT   IN   CHILDHOOD. 


SIR    WALTER   SCOTT  131 

ing  of  truth  and  reality  which  is  forced  upon  us  while  perusing  his  fictions.  He 
was  born  at  Edinburgh,  August  15,  1771.  His  father  was  one  of  that  respectable 
class  of  attorneys  called,  in  Scotland,  writers  to  the  signet,  and  was  the  original 
from  whom  his  son  subsequently  drew  the  character  of  Mr.  Saunders  Fairford, 
in  "  Redgauntlet."  His  mother  was  a  lady  of  taste  and  imagination.  An  acci- 
dental lameness  and  a  delicate  constitution  procured  for  Walter  a  more  than  or- 
dinary portion  of  maternal  care,  and  the  influence  of  his  mother's  instructions  was 
strongly  impressed  on  his  character.  In  early  childhood  he  was  sent  for  change 
of  air  to  the  country  seat  of  his  maternal  grandfather,  where  he  first  developed 
his  extraordinar}^  powers  of  memory  by  learning  the  traditionary  legends  of  bor- 
der heroism  and  chivalry,  which  used  to  be  recited  at  the  fireside  on  a  winter's 
evening.  His  early  taste  for  the  romantic  was  a  little  checked  when  he  returned 
to  Edinburgh,  in  his  eighth  year,  for  his  father  was  rather  a  strict  adherent  to 
forms,  and  looked  upon  poetry  and  fiction  as  very  questionable  indulgences. 
The  discovery  of  a  copy  of  Shakespeare,  and  an  odd  volume  of  Percy's  "  Relics," 
enabled  him  to  resume  his  favorite  pursuits,  though  the  hours  he  devoted  to  them 
were  stolen  from  sleep.  He  was  sent  at  an  early  age  to  the  high-school  of 
Edinburgh,  but  was  not  particularly  distinguished  in  the  regular  course  of  study. 
His  companions,  however,  soon  discovered  his  antiquarian  tastes,  and  his  passion- 
ate love  for  old  tales  of  chivalry  and  old  chronicles  scarcely  less  romantic  ;  he 
became  noted,  too,  for  reciting  stories  of  his  own  invention,  in  which  he  intro- 
duced a  superabundance  of  the  marvels  of  ancient  superstition,  with  a  plentiful 
seasoning  of  knight-errantry.  He  even  pursued  his  favorite  subject  into  the  con- 
tinental languages,  and  by  his  own  exertions  enabled  himself  to  peruse  the  works 
of  Ariosto  and  Cervantes  in  their  original  form. 

After  a  brief  residence  at  the  university  he  was  indented  as  an  apprentice  to 
his  father  in  1 7S6.  Though  the  daily  routine  of  drudgery  in  an  attorney's  office 
must  have  been  painful  to  a  young  man  of  ardent  imagination,  he  did  not  neglect 
anv  of  the  tasks  which  his  father  imposed,  and  he  thus  formed  habits  of  method, 
punctuality,  and  laborious  industry,  which  were  important  elements  of  his  future 
success.  But  in  the  midst  of  these  duties  he  did  not  lose  sight  of  the  favorite 
objects  of  his  study  and  meditation.  He  made  frequent  excursions  into  the  low- 
land and  highland  districts  in  search  of  traditionary  lore  ;  his  investigations  led 
him  to  the  cottage  of  the  peasant  as  frequently  as  to  the  houses  of  the  better 
class,  and  his  frank  manners  secured  him  a  favorable  reception  from  all. 

In  1792  he  changed  his  profession  for  that  of  an  advocate,  but  did  not  obtain 
much  practice  at  the  Scottish  bar.  His  first  publication  was  a  translation  from 
the  German  ;  Burger's  wild  romantic  ballads  captivated  his  youthful  imagination, 
and  his  version  of  them  proved  that  he  entered  deeply  into  the  spirit  of  the 
original.  Soon  afterward  he  contributed  some  pieces  to  Lewis'  "  Tales  of  Won- 
der," which  are  almost  the  only  fragments  of  that  work  which  have  escaped  ob- 
livion. At  last,  in  1802,  he  gave  to  the  world  the  two  first  volumes  of  his  "  Bor- 
der Minstrelsy,"  printed  by  his  old  schoolfellow,  Ballantyne  ;  its  literary  merits 
were  enhanced  by  the  beauty  of  its  typographical  execution,  and  its  appearance 


132  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

made  an  epoch  in  Scottish  Htcrary  history.  The  ballads  of  this  collection  had 
been  very  carefully  edited,  while  the  notes  contained  a  mass  of  antiquarian  in- 
formation relative  to  border  life,  conveyed  in  a  beautiful  style,  and  enlivened 
with  a  higher  interest  than  poetic  fiction.  This  work  at  once  obtained  an  exten- 
sive sale,  and  its  popularity  was  increased  by  the  appearance  of  the  third  volume, 
containing  various  imitations  of  the  old  ballad  by  Mr.  Scott,  in  which  the  feel- 
ings and  character  of  antiquity  were  faithfully  preserved,  while  tlie  language  and 
expression  were  free  from  the  roughness  of  obsolete  forms.  The  copyright  of 
the  second  edition  was  sold  to  the  Messrs.  Longman  for  ^500,  but  the  great 
extent  of  the  sale  made  the  bargain  profitable. 

Three  years  elapsed  before  he  again  took  the  field  as  an  author ;  but  the 
poem  which  he  then  produced,  at  once  placed  him  among  the  great  original  writ- 
ers of  his  country.  "The  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel"  was  a  complete  expansion 
of  the  old  ballad  into  an  epic  form.  "It  seemed,"  says  Prescott,  "as  if  the 
author  had  transferred  into  his  page  the  strong  delineations  of  the  Homeric  pen- 
cil, the  rude  but  generous  gallantry  of  a  primitive  period,  softened  by  the  more 
airy  and  magical  inventions  of  Italian  romance,  and  conveyed  in  tones  of  mel- 
ody such  as  had  not  been  heard  since  the  strains  of  Burns."  Its  popularity  was 
unprecedented,  and  its  success  determined  the  course  of  his  future  life. 

Scott's  position  enabled  him  to  encounter  the  hazards  of  literary  life  with 
comparative  safety.  He  held  two  offices,  that  of  Sheriff  of  Selkirk,  and  Clerk  of 
the  Court  of  Sessions,  which  yielded  him  a  competent  income.  He  received  some 
accession  to  his  fortune  on  his  marriage,  and  the  tastes  of  his  lady  prevented  her 
from  indulging  in  any  of  the  extravagance  of  fashionable  life.  Domestic  happi- 
ness and  rural  retirement  were  favorable  to  literary  exertion.  He  soon  produced 
a  second  poem,  "  Marmion,"  which  many  critics  prefer  to  all  his  other  poems.  It 
was,  however,  rather  harshly  attacked  in  the  Edmhirgh  Review  on  its  first  ap- 
pearance, which  the  author  felt  keenly,  as  he  had  been  himself  a  contributor  to 
that  journal.  This  was  the  origin  of  the  Quarterly  Rcviezv,  which  was  established 
mainly  in  consequence  of  his  exertions.  About  the  same  time  he  established  a 
new  Annual  Register,  and  became  a  silent  partner  in  the  great  printing  estab- 
lishment of  the  Ballantynes.  This  last  step  involved  him  in  grievous  embarrass- 
ments, but  it  stimulated  him  to  exertions  such  as  none  but  a  man  of  his  prodig- 
ious powers  could  attempt.  His  biographical,  historical,  and  critical  labors, 
united  with  his  editorial  toils,  were  of  appalling  magnitude,  but  in  all  his  works 
he  proved  himself  to  be  vigorous  and  effective.  "  Poetry,"  he  says  in  one  of  his 
letters,  "  is  a  scourging  crop,  and  ought  not  to  be  hastily  repeated.  Editing, 
therefore,  may  be  considered  as  a  green  crop  of  turnips  or  peas,  extremely  use- 
ful to  those  whose  circumstances  do  not  admit  of  giving  their  farm  a  summer 
fallow." 

The  ''  Lady  of  the  Lake  "  was  his  next  poem  ;  it  appeared  in  181 1,  and  soon 
outstripped  all  his  former  productions  in  fame  and  popularity.  More  than  fifty 
thousand  copies  of  it  were  sold,  and  the  profits  of  the  author  exceeded  two  thou- 
sand guineas.      It  may  be  noticed  as  a  curious  proof  of  the  effect  it  produced 


SIR   WALTER   SCOTT  133 

on  the  public  mind,  that  the  post-horse  duty  rose  to  an  extraordinary  degree  in 
Scotland,  from  the  eagerness  of  travellers  to  visit  the  localities  described  in  the 
poem.  He  was  now  at  the  zenith  of  his  fame.  The  sale  of  his  next  poem, 
"  Rokeby,"  showed  that  his  popularity  had  declined,  and  when  this  was  followed 
by  the  comparative  failure  of  the  "  Lord  of  the  Isles,"  he  resolved  to  abandon 
the  field  of  poetry,  and  seek  for  fame  in  another  form  of  composition. 

Ten  years  before  this  period  he  had  commenced  the  novel  of  "Waverley," 
and  thrown  the  manuscript  aside  ;  having  accidentally  discovered  the  unfinished 
romance  amid  the  old  lumber  of  a  garret,  he  completed  it  for  the  press  in  1814, 
and  published  it  anonymously.  Its  appearance  created  a  greater  sensation  and 
marks  a  more  distinct  epoch  in  literary  history  than  that  of  his  poetry.  It  was 
the  great  object  of  his  ambition  to  become  a  land-owner  and  to  hold  a  high  rank, 
not  among  the  literary  characters,  but  the  country  gentlemen  of  Scotland,  and 
this  was  one  of  the  causes  of  his  being  anxious  to  keep  the  authorship  of  his 
novels  a  profound  secret.  The  same  ambition  stimulated  him  to  exertion.  He 
produced  in  rapid  succession  "Guy  Mannering,"  "The  Antiquary,"  "Rob  Roy," 
and  the  "  Tales  of  my  Landlord  "  in  three  series,  and  at  the  same  time  published 
several  pieces  in  his  own  name  to  increase  the  mystification  of  the  public.  But 
his  incognito  was  soon  detected  ;  long  before  he  avowed  his  romances,  the  world 
generally  had  found  out  his  secret ;  indeed,  when  he  was  created  a  baronet  in 
1820,  it  was  universally  understood  that  this  honor  was  conferred  on  him  as 
author  of  the  Waverley  Novels. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  enumerate  all  the  fictions  that  emanated  from  the  brill- 
iant imagination  of  the  Northern  Enchanter ;  the  list  would  be  too  long,  but  we 
must  not  omit  to  notice  the  energy  with  which  he  labored.  Even  illness,  that 
would  have  broken  the  spirits  of  most  men,  as  it  prostrated  the  physical  energies 
of  Scott,  opposed  no  impediment  to  the  progress  of  his  compositions.  When 
he  could  not  write  he  could  dictate  ;  and  in  this  way,  amid  the  agonies  of  a  rack- 
ing disease,  he  composed  "The  Bride  of  Lammermoor,"  "The  Legend  of  Mont- 
rose," and  a  great  part  of  the  most  fascinating  of  his  works,  "  Ivanhoe."  Never, 
certainly,  did  mind  exhibit  so  decisive  a  triumph  over  physical  suffering.  "  Be 
assured,"  he  remarked  to  Mr.  Gillies,  "that  if  pain  could  have  prevented  my  ap- 
plication to  literary  work,  not  a  page  of  '  Ivanhoe  '  would  have  been  written. 
Now,  if  I  had  given  way  to  mere  feelings  and  ceased  to  work,  it  is  a  question 
whether  the  disorder  would  not  have  taken  deeper  root  and  become  incurable." 

The  crowds  of  visitors  that  flocked  to  his  baronial  mansion  at  Abbotsford,  from 
all  quarters,  greatly  added  to  the  expenses  which  the  hospitable  owner  had  to 
meet ;  but  the  unbounded  popularity  of  his  novels  appeared  to  him  and  to  his 
publishers  a  never-failing  source  of  funds ;  and  the  Messrs.  Constable  accepted 
his  drafts,  to  the  amount  of  many  thousand  pounds,  in  favor  of  works  which  were 
not  only  unwritten,  but  even  unimagined.  Unfortunately,  Scott,  in  return,  could 
not  refuse  to  indorse  the  drafts  of  his  publishers,  and  thus  an  amount  of  liabilities 
was  incurred  which  would  appear  quite  inexplicable,  if  experience  had  not  shown 
that  the  dangerous  facilities  of  accommodation  bills  lead  men  on  to  an  extent 


134  •   ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

that  they  never  discover  until  the  crash  comes.  In  the  great  commercial  crisis 
of  1S25  Constables'  house  stopped  payment;  the  assets  proved  to  be  very  trifling 
in  comparison  with  the  debts,  and  Sir  Walter  Scott  was  found  to  be  responsible 
to  the  startling  amount  of  one  hundred  thousand  pounds ! 

His  conduct  on  this  occasion  was  truly  noble  ;  he  put  up  his  house  and  fur- 
niture in  Edinburgh  to  auction,  delivered  over  his  personal  effects — plate,  books, 
furniture,  etc. — to  be  held  in  trust  for  his  creditors  (the  estate  itself  had  been 
settled  on  his  eldest  son  when  he  married),  and  bound  himself  to  discharge  annu- 
ally a  certain  amount  of  the  liabilities  of  the  insolvent  firm.  He  then,  with  his 
characteristic  energy,  set  about  the  performance  of  his  herculean  task.  He  took 
cheap  lodgings,  abridged  his  usual  enjoyments  and  recreations,  and  labored  harder 
than  ever.  The  death  of  his  beloved  lady  increased  the  gloom  which  the  change 
of  circumstances  produced,  but  though  he  sorrowed  he  did  not  relax  his  exer- 
tions. One  of  his  first  tasks  was  the  "  Life  of  Bonaparte,"  which  he  completed  in 
the  short  space  of  thirteen  months.  For  this  he  received  from  the  publishers  the 
sum  of  _;^ 1 4, 000,  and  such  was  its  great  circulation  that  they  had  no  reason  to  re- 
pent of  their  bargain.  In  the  same  year  that  this  work  appeared,  he  took  an  op- 
portunity of  publicly  avowing  his  authorship  of  the  Waverley  Novels,  declaring 
"  that  their  merits,  if  they  had  any,  and  the'ir  faults  were  entirely  imputable  to 
himself." 

Sir  Walter  Scott's  celebrity  made  everything  that  he  produced  acceptable  to 
the  public.  He  did  not  allow  these  favorable  impressions  to  fade  for  want  of  ex- 
ercise, and  the  list  of  the  works,  great  and  small,  which  he  produced  to  satisfy  his 
creditors,  is  an  unexampled  instance  of  successful  labors.  No  one  of  these  en- 
terprises was  so  profitable  as  the  republication  of  his  novels  in  a  uniform  series, 
with  his  own  notes  and  illustrations.  It  was  not  given  to  Sir  Walter  Scott  to  see 
the  complete  restoration  of  his  former  position;  his  exertions  were  too  severe 
and  pressed  heavily  on  the  springs  of  health,  already  deprived  by  age  of  their 
elasticity  and  vigor.  In  the  short  space  of  six  years  he  had,  by  his  sacrifices 
and  exertions,  discharged  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  debt  for  which  he  was  re- 
sponsible, and  he  had  fair  prospects  of  relieving  himself  from  the  entire  sum. 
But  in  1 83 1  he  was  seized  with  a  terrible  attack  of  paralysis,  to  which  his  family 
had  a  constitutional  tendency,  and  he  was  advised  to  try  the  effect  of  a  more 
genial  climate  in  Southern  Europe.  The  British  Government  placed  a  ship  at  his 
disposal  to  convey  him  to  Italy ;  and  when  he  came  to  London,  men  of  every 
class  and  party  vied  with  each  other  in  expressing  sympathy  for  his  sufferings  and 
hopes  for  his  recovery. 

In  Italy  he  was  received  with  the  greatest  enthusiasm,  and  under  the  influ- 
ence of  its  sunny  skies  he  seemed,  for  a  while,  to  be  recovering.  But  his  strength 
was  gone,  his  heart  was  in  his  own  home  at  Abbotsford,  and,  almost  an  imbecile, 
he  returned  there.     He  died  September  20,  1832. 


^-* 


'fW  :  y 


8IR    rt.  A.L-Mi   Pi:. All. 


SIR    WALTER    SCOTT    AT    ABBOTSFORD. 


SIR   WALTER   SCOTT  135 

The  following  letter  was  written  by  him  to  his  son  Walter,  in  1819,  soon  after 
the  young  man  had  entered  the  army.  It  illustrates  at  once  his  strong  affections 
and  his  knowledge  of  the  world. 

"  Dear  Walter. 

" .  .  .  I  shall  be  curious  to  know  how  you  like  your  brother  officers,  and 
how  you  dispose  of  your  time.  The  drills  and  riding-school  will,  of  course,  oc- 
cupy much  of  your  mornings  for  some  time.  I  trust,  however,  you  will  keep  in 
view  drawing,  languages,  etc.  It  is  astonishing  how  far  even  half  an  hour  a  day, 
regularly  bestowed  on  one  object,  will  carry  a  man  in  making  himself  master  of 
it.  The  habit  of  dawdling  away  time  is  easily  acquired,  and  so  is  that  of  putting 
ever)'  moment  either  to  use  or  to  amusement. 

"You  will  not  be  hasty  in  forming  intimacies  with  any  of  your  brother  offi- 
cers, until  you  observe  which  of  them  are  most  generally  respected  and  likely  to 
prove  most  creditable  friends.  It  is  seldom  that  the  people  who  put  themselves 
hastily  forward  to  please  are  those  most  worthy  of  being  known.  At  the  same 
time  you  will  take  care  to  return  all  civility  which  is  offered,  with  readiness  and 
frankness.  The  Italians  have  a  proverb,  which  I  hope  you  have  not  forgot  poor 
Pierrotti's  lessons  so  far  as  not  to  comprehend — '  Volio  sciolto  e  pcnsieri  strctti.' 
There  is  no  occasion  to  let  any  one  see  what  you  exactly  think  of  him  ;  and  it  is 
the  less  prudent,  as  you  will  find  reason,  in  all  probability,  to  change  your  opinion 
more  than  once. 

"  I  shall  be  glad  to  hear  of  your  being  fitted  with  a  good  servant.  Most  of 
the  Irish  of  that  class  are  scapegraces — drink,  steal,  and  lie  like  the  devil.  If  you 
could  pick  up  a  canny  Scot  it  would  be  well.  Let  me  know  about  your  mess. 
To  drink  hard  is  none  of  your  habits,  but  even  drinking  what  is  called  a  certain 
quantity  every  day  hurts  the  stomach,  and  by  hereditary  descent  yours  is  delicate. 
I  believe  the  poor  Duke  of  Buccleuch  laid  the  foundation  of  that  disease  which 
occasioned  his  premature  death  in  the  excesses  of  Villar's  regiment,  and  I  am 
sorry  and  ashamed  to  say,  for  your  warning,  that  the  habit  of  drinking  wine,  so 
much  practised  when  I  was  a  young  man,  occasioned,  I  am  convinced,  many  of 
my  cruel  stomach  complaints.  You  had  better  drink  a  bottle  of  wine  on  any 
particular  occasion,  than  sit  and  soak  and  sipple  at  an  English  pint  every  day. 

"  All  our  bipeds  are  well.  Hamlet  had  an  inflammatory  attack,  and  I  began 
to  think  he  was  going  mad,  after  the  example  of  his  great  namesake,  but  Willie 
Laidlaw  bled  him,  and  he  has  recovered.  Pussy  is  very  well.  Mamma,  the 
girls,  and  Charlie  join  in  love.     Yours  affectionately, 

"W.  S. 

"  P.S. — Always  mention  what  letters  of  mine  you  have  received,  and  write 
to  mc  whatever  comes  into  your  head.  It  is  the  privilege  of  great  boys  when 
distant,  that  they  cannot  tire  papas  by  any  length  of  detail  upon  any  subject." 


136 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


WILLIAM   WORDSWORTH 

(i 770-1850) 

WILLIAM  Wordsworth,  the  poet,  was 
born  at  Cockermouth,  on  the  Der- 
went,  in  Cumberland,  on  April  7,  1770. 
His  parentage  offers  a  curious  parallel  to 
Scott's ;  he  was  the  son  of  an  attorney, 
law-agent  to  the  Earl  of  Lonsdale,  a 
prosperous  man  in  his  profession,  de- 
scended from  an  old  Yorkshire  family 
of  landed  gentry.  On  the  mother's  side, 
also,  Wordsworth  was  connected  with  the 
middle  territorial  class  ;  his  mother,  Anne 
Cookson,  was  the  daughter  of  a  well-to- 
do  mercer  in  Penrith ;  but  her  mother 
was  a  Crackanthorpe,  whose  ancestors  had 
been  lords  of  the  manor  of  Newbiggin, 
near  Penrith,  from  the  time  of  Edward 
III.  He  was  thus,  as  Scott  put  it  in  his 
own  case,  come  of  "gentle  "  kin,  and,  like  Scott,  he  was  proud  of  it,  and  declared 
the  fact  in  his  short  fragment  of  prose  autobiography.  The  country  squires  and 
farmers  whose  blood  flowed  in  Wordsworth's  veins  were  not  far  enough  above 
local  life  to  be  out  of  sympathy  with  it,  and  the  poet's  interest  in  the  common 
scenes  and  common  folk  of  the  North  Country  hills  and  dales  had  a  traceable 
hereditary  bias. 

Though  his  parents  were  of  sturdy  stock,  both  died  prematurely,  his  mother 
when  he  was  five  years  old,  his  father  when  he  was  thirteen,  the  ultimate  cause 
of  death  in  his  mother's  case  being  exposure  to  cold  in  "  a  best  bedroom  "  in 
London  ;  in  his  father's,  exposure  on  a  Cumberland  hill,  where  he  had  been  be- 
fogged and  lost  his  way.  At  the  age  of  eight  Wordsworth  was  sent  to  school 
at  Hawkshead,  in  the  Esthwaite  Valley,  in  Lancashire.  His  father  died  while  he 
was  there,  and  at  the  age  of  seventeen  he  was  sent  by  his  uncle  to  St.  John's 
College,  Cambridge.  He  did  not  distinguish  himself  in  the  studies  of  the  uni- 
versity, and  for  some  time  after  taking  his  degree  of  B.A.,  which  he  did  in  Jan- 
uary, 1 79 1,  he  showed  what  seemed  to  his  relatives  a  most  perverse  reluctance  to 
adopt  any  regular  profession.  His  mother  had  noted  his  "stiiT,  moody,  and  vio- 
lent temper"  in  childhood,  and  it  seemed  as  if  this  family  judgment  was  to  be 
confirmed  in  his  manhood.  After  taking  his  degree  he  was  pressed  to  take  holy 
orders,  but  would  not ;  he  had  no  taste  for  the  law ;  he  idled  a  few  months  aim- 
lessly in  London,  a  few  months  more  with  a  Welsh  college  friend,  with  whom 


WILLIAM    WORDSWORTH  137 

he  had  made  a  pedestrian  tour  in  France  and  Switzerland,  during  his  last  Cam- 
bridge vacation  ;  then,  in  November  of  1 791,  he  crossed  to  France,  ostensibly 
to  learn  the  language,  made  the  acquaintance  of  revolutionaries,  sympathized 
with  them  vehemently,  and  was  within  an  ace  of  throwing  in  his  lot  with  the 
Brissotins,  to  give  them  the  steady  direction  that  they  needed.  When  it  came  to 
this  his  relatives  cut  off  his  supplies,  and  he  was  obliged  to  return  to  London 
toward  the  close  of  i  792.  But  still  he  resisted  all  pressure  to  enter  any  of  the 
regular  professions,  published  "  An  Evening  Walk  "  and  "  Descriptive  Sketches," 
in  1 793,  and  in  1 794,  still  moving  about  to  all  appearance  in  stubborn  aimless- 
ness  among  his  friends  and  relatives,  had  no  more  rational  purpose  of  livelihood 
than  drawing  up  the  prospectus  of  a  periodical  of  strictly  republican  principles,  to 
be  called  The  Pliilanlhropist.  At  this  stage,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  Words- 
worth seemed  to  his  friends  a  very  hopeless  and  impracticable  young  man. 

But  all  the  time  from  his  boyhood  upward  a  great  purpose  had  been  growing 
and  maturing  in  his  miiid.  Nature  was  little  more  than  a  picture-gallery  to  him; 
the  pleasures  of  the  eye  had  all  but  absolute  dominion  ;  and  he 

"  Roamed  from  hill  to  hill,  from  rock  to  rock, 
Still  craving  combinations  of  new  forms, 
New  pleasures,  wide  empire  for  the  sight. 
Proud  of  her  own  endowments,  and  rejoiced 
To  lay  the  inner  faculties  asleep." 

But,  though  he  had  not  yet  found  his  distinctive  aim  as  a  poet,  he  was  inwardly 
bent,  all  the  time  that  his  relatives  saw  in  him  only  a  wayward  and  unpromising 
aversion  to  work  in  any  regular  line,  upon  poetry  as  "his  office  upon  earth." 

In  this  determination  he  was  strengthened  by  his  sister  Dorothy,  who  with 
rare  devotion  consecrated  her  life  henceforward  to  his  service.  A  timely  legacy 
enabled  them  to  carry  their  purpose  into  effect.  A  friend  of  his,  whom  he  had 
nursed  in  a  last  illness,  Raisley  Calvert,  son  of  the  steward  of  the  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk, who  had  large  estates  in  Cumberland,  died  early  in  1795,  leaving  him  a  leg- 
agy  of  ^900.  And  here  it  may  be  well  to  notice  how  opportunely,  as  De  Quincey 
half-ruefully  remarked,  money  always  fell  in  to  Wordsworth,  enabling  him  to 
pursue  his  poetic  career  without  distraction.  Calvert's  bequest  came  to  him  when 
he  was  on  the  point  of  concluding  an  engagement  as  a  journalist  in  London. 
On  it  and  other  small  resources  he  and  his  sister,  thanks  to  her  frugal  manage- 
ment, contrived  to  live  for  nearly  eight  years.  By  the  end  of  that  time  Lord 
Lonsdale,  who  owed  Wordsworth's  father  a  large  sum  for  professional  services, 
and  had  steadily  refused  to  pay  it,  died,  and  his  successor  paid  the  debt  with  in- 
terest. His  wife,  Mary  Hutchinson,  whom  he  married  in  1802,  brought  him 
some  fortune  ;  and  in  1813,  when,  in  spite  of  his  plain  living,  his  family  began  to 
press  upon  his  income,  he  was  appointed  stamp-distributor  for  Westmoreland, 
with  an  income  of  ^500,  afterward  nearly  doubled  by  the  increase  of  his  district. 
By  this  succession  of  timely  godsends,  Wordsworth,  though  he  did  not  escape 
some  periods  of  sharp  anxiety,  was  saved  from  the  necessity  of  turning  aside  from 
his  vocation. 


138  ARTISTS    AND   AUTHORS 

To  return,  however,  to  the  course  of  his  life  from  the  time  when  he  resolved 
to  labor  with  all  his  powers  in  the  office  of  poet.  The  first  two  years,  during 
which  he  lived  with  his  self-sacrificing  sister  at  Racedown,  in  Dorset,  were  spent 
in  half-hearted  and  very  imperfectly  successful  experiments — satires  in  imitation 
of  Juvenal,  the  tragedy  of  "  The  Borderers,"  and  a  poem  in  the  Spenserian 
stanza,  the  poem  now  entitled  "Guilt  and  Sorrow."  How  much  longer  this 
time  of  doubtful,  self-distrustful  endeavor  might  have  continued  is  a  subject  for 
curious  speculation  ;  an  end  was  put  to  it  by  a  fortunate  incident,  a  visit  from 
Coleridge,  who  had  read  his  first  publication,  and  seen  in  it,  what  none  of  the 
public  critics  had  discerned,  the  advent  of  "  an  original  poetic  genius."  It  would 
be  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  importance  for  Wordsworth  of  the  arrival  of  this 
enthusiastic  Columbus.  Under  his  sister's  genial  influence  he  was  groping  his 
way  doubtfully  out  of  the  labyrinth  of  poetic  conventions,  beginning  to  see  a  new 
pathos  and  sublimity  in  human  life,  but  not  yet  convinced,  except  by  fits  and 
starts,  of  the  rightness  of  his  own  vision.  Stubborn  and  independent  as  Words- 
worth was,  he  needed  some  friendly  voice  from  the  outer  world  to  give  him  con- 
fidence in  himself.  Coleridge  rendered  him  this  indispensable  service.  He  read 
to  his  visitor  one  of  his  experiments,  the  story  of  the  ruined  cottage,  afterward 
introduced  into  the  first  book  of  "The  Excursion."  Coleridge,  who  had  already 
seen  original  poetic  genius  in  the  poems  published  before,  was  enthusiastic  in 
his  praise  of  them  as  having  "a  character  by  books  not  hitherto  reflected,"  and 
his  praise  gave  new  heart  and  hope  to  the  poet,  hitherto  hesitating  and  uncertain. 

June,  1797,  was  the  date  of  this  memorable  visit.  So  pleasant  was  the  com- 
panionship on  both  sides  that,  when  Coleridge  returned  to  Nether  Stowey,  in 
Somerset,  W^ordsworth,  at  his  instance,  changed  his  quarters  to  Alfoxden,  within 
a  mile  and  a  half  of  Coleridge's  temporary  residence,  and  the  two  poets  lived  in 
almost  daily  intercourse  for  the  next  twelve  months.  During  that  period  Words- 
worth's powers  rapidly  expanded  and  matured  ;  ideas  that  had  been  gathering  in 
his  mind  for  years,  and  lying  there  in  dim  confusion,  felt  the  stir  of  a  new  life 
and  ranged  themselves  in  clearer  shapes  under  the  fresh,  quickening  breath  of 
Coleridge's  swift  and  discursive  dialect.  The  radiant  restless  vitality  of  the  more 
variously  gifted  man  stirred  the  stiffer  and  more  sluggish  nature  of  the  recluse  to 
its  depths,  and  Coleridge's  quick  and  generous  appreciation  of  his  power  gave 
him  precisely  the  encouragement  that  he  needed. 

It  is  interesting  to  compare  with  what  he  actually  accomplished,  the  plan  of 
life-work  with  which  Wordsworth  finally  settled  at  Grasmere,  in  the  last  month 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  The  plan  was  definitely  conceived  as  he  left  the  Ger- 
man town  of  Goslar,  during  a  trip  on  the  Continent,  in  the  spring  of  1 799.  Tired 
of  the  wandering,  unsettled  life  that  he  had  led  hitherto  ;  dissatisfied  also  with  the 
fragmentary,  occasional,  and  disconnected  character  of  his  lyrical  poems,  he  longed 
for  a  permanent  home  among  his  native  hills,  where  he  might,  as  one  called  and 
consecrated  to  the  task,  devote  his  powers  continuously  to  the  composition  of  a 
great  philosophical  poem  on  Man,  Nature,  and  Society.  The  poem  was  to  be 
called  "The  Recluse."     He  communicated  the  design  to  Coleridge,  who  gave 


WILLIAM    WORDSWORTH  139 

him  enthusiastic  encouragement  to  proceed.  In  the  first  transport  of  the  con- 
ception he  felt  as  if  he  needed  only  solitude  and  leisure  for  the  continuous 
execution  of  it.  But,  though  he  had  still  before  him  fifty  years  of  peaceful 
life  amid  his  beloved  scenery,  the  work  in  the  projected  form  at  least  was  des- 
tined to  remain  incomplete.  Doubts  and  misgivings  soon  arose,  and  favorable 
moments  of  felt  inspiration  delayed  their  coming.  To  sustain,  him  in  his  resolu- 
tion he  thought  of  writing  as  an  introduction,  or,  as  he  put  it,  an  antechapel  to 
the  church  which  he  proposed  to  build,  a  history  of  his  own  mind  up  to  the  time 
when  he  recognized  the  great  mission  of  his  life.  It  appears  from  a  letter  to  his 
friend,  Sir  George  Beaumont,  that  his  health  was  far  from  robust,  and  in  partic- 
ular that  he  could  not  write  without  intolerable  physical  uneasiness.  We  should 
probably  not  be  wrong  in  connecting  his  physical  weakness  with  his  rule  of  wait- 
ing for  favorable  moments.  His  next  start  with  "The  Prelude,"  in  the  spring 
of  1804,  was  more  prosperous;  he  dropped  it  for  several  months,  but,  resuming 
again  in  the  spring  of  1805,  he  completed  it  in  the  summer  of  that  year.  But 
still  the  composition  of,  the  great  work  to  which  it  was  intended  to  be  a  portico 
proceeded  by  fits  and  starts.  It  was  not  till  18 14  that  the  second  of  the  three 
divisions  of  "  The  Recluse,"  ultimately  named  "  The  Excursion,"  was  ready  for 
publication ;  and  he  went  no  further  in  the  execution  of  his  great  design. 

We  shall  speak  pre'sently  of  the  reception  of  the  "The  Excursion."  Mean- 
time, we  must  look  elsewhere  for  the  virtual  accomplishment  of  the  great  design 
of  "  The  Recluse."  The  purpose  v/as  not,  after  all,  betrayed  ;  it  was  really  ful- 
filled, though  not  in  the  form  intended,  in  his  various  occasional  poems.  In  re- 
lation to  the  edifice  that  he  aspired  to  construct,  he  likened  these  poems  to  little 
cells,  oratories,  and  sepulchral  recesses  ;  they  are  really  the  completed  work,  much 
more  firmly  united  by  their  common  purpose  than  by  any  formal  and  visible 
nexus  of  words.  Formally  disconnected^  they  really,  as  we  read  and  feel  them, 
range  themselves  to  spiritual  music,  as  the  component  parts  of  a  great  poetic  tem- 
ple, finding  a  rendezvous  amid  the  scenery  of  the  district  where  the  poet  had  his 
local  habitation.  The  Lake  District,  as  transfigured  by  Wordsworth's  imagina- 
tion, is  the  fulfilment  of  his  ambition  after  an  enduring  memorial.  The  Poems, 
collected  and  published  in  1807,  compose  in  effect  "a  philosophical  poem  on 
Man,  Nature,  and  Society,"  the  title  of  which  might  fitly  have  been  "The  Re- 
cluse," "as  having  for  its  principal  subject  the  sensations  and  opinions  of  a  poet 
living  in  retirement."  As  a  realization  of  the  idea  of  "  The  Recluse,"  these 
poems  are,  from  ev^ery  poetical  point  of  view,  infinitelv  superior  to  the  kind  of 
thing  that  he  projected  and  failed  to  complete. 

The  derisive  fury  with  which  "  The  Excursion  "  was  assailed  upon  its  first 
appearance  has  long  been  a  stock  example  of  critical  blindness,  conceit,  and  ma- 
lignity. And  yet,  if  we  look  at  the  position  now  claimed  for  "  The  Excursion  " 
by  competent  authorities,  the  error  of  the  first  critics  is  seen  to  be  not  in  their 
indictment  of  faults,  but  in  the  prominence  they  gave  to  the  faults,  and  their  gen- 
erallv  disrespectful  tone  toward  a  poet  of  W^ordsworth's  greatness.  Jeffrey's  pet- 
ulant "  This  will  never  do,"  uttered,  professedly,  at  least,  more  in  sorrow  than  in 


140  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

anger,  because  the  poet  would  persist,  in  spite  of  all  friendly  counsel,  in  misapply- 
ing his  powers,  has  become  a  byword  of  ridiculous  critical  cocksureness.  But 
the  curious  thing  is  that  "  The  Excursion  "  has  not  "  done,"  and  that  the  Words- 
worthians  who  laugh  at  Jeffrey  are  in  the  habit  of  repeating  the  substance  of  his 
criticism,  though  in  more  temperate  and  becoming  language. 

There  can  be  little  doubt  that  adverse  criticism  had  a  depressing  influence  on 
Wordsworth's  poetical  powers,  notwithstanding  his  nobly  expressed  defiance  of 
it,  and  his  determination  to  hold  on  in  his  own  path  undisturbed.  Its  effect  in 
retarding  the  sale  of  his  poems,  and  thus  depriving  him  of  the  legitimate  fruits  of 
his  industry,  was  a  favorite  topic  with  him  in  his  later  years  ;  but  the  absence  of 
general  appreciation,  and  the  ridicule  of  what  he  considered  his  best  and  most 
distinctive  work,  contributed  in  all  probability  to  a  still  more  unfortunate  result 
— the  premature  depression  and  deadening  of  his  powers.  He  schooled  himself 
to  stoical  endurance,  but  he  was  not  superhuman,  and  in  the  absence  of  sym- 
pathy not  only  was  any  possibility  of  development  checked,  but  he  ceased  to 
write  with  the  spontaneity  and  rapture  of  his  earlier  verse.  His  resolute  indus- 
try was  productive  of  many  wise,  impressive,  and  charitable  reflections,  and  many 
casual  felicities  of  diction,  but  the  poet  very  seldom  reached  the  highest  level  of 
his  earlier  inspirations. 

Wordsworth  was  appointed  poet-laureate  on  the  death  of  Southey,  in  1843. 
His  only  official  composition  was  an  ode  on  the  installation  of  the  prince  con- 
sort as  chancellor  of  Cambridge  University,  in  1847.  This  was  his  last  writing 
in  verse.  He  died  at  Rydal  Mount,  after  a  short  illness,  on  April  23,  1850,  and 
was  buried  in  Grasmere  Churchyard. 


WASHINGTON  IRVING 

(i  783-1859) 

Washington  Irving,  the  first  American  who  obtained  a  European 
reputation  merely  as  a  man  of  letters,  was  born  at  New  York,  April 
3,  1 783.  Both  his  parents  were  immigrants  from  Great  Britain, 
his  father,  oriarinallv  an  officer  in  the  merchant  service,  but  at  the 
time  of  Irving's  birth  a  considerable  merchant,  having  come  from 
the  Orkneys  and  his  mother  from  Falmouth.  Irving  was  intended  for  the  legal 
profession,  but  his  studies  were  interrupted  by  an  illness  necessitating  a  voyage 
to  Europe,  in  the  course  of  which  he  proceeded  as  far  as  Rome  arid  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Washington  Allston.  He  was  called  to  the  Bar  upon  his  return, 
but  made  little  effort  to  practice,  preferring  to  amuse  himself  with  literary  vent- 
ures. The  first  of  these  of  any  importance,  a  satirical  miscellany  entitled  "  Sal- 
magundi," written  in  conjunction  with  his  brother  William  and  J.  K.  Paulding, 
gave  ample   proof  of  his  talents  as   a  humorist.     These  Avere  still   more   con- 


WASHINGTON   IRVING 


141 


spicuously  displayed  in  his  next  attempt,  "  Knickerbocker's  History  of  New 
York  "  (1809).  The  satire  of  "  Salmagundi  "  had  been  principally  local,  and  the 
original  design  of  "Knickerbocker's  History"  was  only  to  burlesque  a  preten- 
tious disquisition  on  the  history  of  the 
city  in  a  guide-book  by  Dr.  Samuel  Mitch- 
ell. The  idea  expanded  as  Irving  pro- 
ceeded, and  he  ended  by  not  merely  sat- 
irizing the  pedantry  of  local  antiquaries, 
but  by  creating  a  distinct  literary  type  out 
of  the  solid  Dutch  burgher  whose  phlegm 
had  long  been  an  object  of  ridicule  to  the 
mercurial  Americans.  Though  far  from 
the  most  finished  of  Irving's  productions, 
"Knickerbocker"  manifests  the  most 
original  power  and  is  the  most  genu- 
inely national  in  its  quaintness  and  droll- 
ery. The  very  tardiness  and  prolixity  of 
the  story  are  skilfully  made  to  heighten 
the  humorous  effect.  The  next  few  years 
were  unproductive.  Upon  the  death  of 
his  father,  Irving  had  become  a  sleeping 
partner  in  his  brother's  commercial  house,  a  branch  of  which  was  established 
at  Liverpool.  This,  combined  with  the  restoration  of  peace,  induced  him 
to  visit  England  in  181 5,  when  he  found  the  stability  of  the  firm  seriously 
compromised.  After  some  years  of  ineffectual  struggle  it  became  bankrupt. 
This  misfortune  compelled  Irving  to  resume  his  pen  as  a  means  of  subsistence. 
His  reputation  had  preceded  him  to  England,  and  the  curiosity  naturally  excited 
by  the  then  unwonted  apparition  of  a  successful  American  author  procured  him 
admission  into  the  highest  literary  circles,  where  his  popularity  was  insured  by  his 
amiable  temper  and  polished  manners.  As  an  American,  moreover,  he  aroused 
no  jealousy  and  no  competition,  and  stood  aloof  from  the  political  and  literary 
disputes  which  then  divided  England.  Campbell,  Jeffrey,  Moore,  Scott  were 
counted  among  his  friends,  and  the  last-named  zealously  recommended  him  to 
the  publisher  Murray,  who,  after  at  first  refusing,  consented  (1820)  to  bring  out 
"Geoffrey  Crayon's  Sketch-book,"  which  was  already  appearing  in  America  in  a 
periodical  form.  The  most  interesting  part  of  this  work  is  the  description  of  an 
English  Christmas,  which  displays  a  delicate  humor  not  unworthy  of  the  writer's 
evident  model,  Addison.  Some  stories  and  sketches  on  American  themes  con- 
tribute to  give  it  variety  ;  of  these  Rip  Van  Winkle  is  the  most  remarkable.  It 
speedily  obtained  the  greatest  success  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic.  "  Bracebridge 
Hall,"  a  work  purely  English  in  sul)jcct,  followed  in  1822,  and  showed  to  what 
account  the  American  observer  had  turned  his  experience  of  English  country  life. 
The  humor  is,  nevertheless,  much  more  English  than  American.  "Tales  of  a 
Traveller"  appeared  in  1824,  and  Irving,  now  in  comfortable  circumstances,  deter- 


142  ARTISTS    AND   AUTHORS 

mined  to  enlarge  his  sphere  of  observation  by  a  journey  on  the  Continent.  After 
a  long  course  of  travel  he  settled  down  at  Madrid,  in  the  house  of  the  American 
consul,  Rich.  His  intention  at  the  time  was  to  translate  Navarrete's  recently 
published  work  on  Columbus.  Finding,  however,  that  this  was  rather  a  collec- 
tion of  valuable  materials  than  a  systematic  biography,  he  determined  to  com- 
pose a  biography  of  his  own  by  its  assistance,  supplemented  by  independent  re- 
searches in  the  Spanish  archives.  His  work  appeared  in  1828  and  obtained  a 
merited  success.  It  is  a  finished  representation  of  Columbus  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  nineteenth  century,  affecting  neither  brilliancy  nor  originality,  but  a 
model  of  tasteful  elegance,  felicitous  in  every  detail  and  adequate  in  every  respect. 
"The  Companions  of  Columbus "  followed  ;  and  a  prolonged  residence  in  the 
south  of  Spain  gave  Irving  materials  for  two  highly  picturesque  books,  "  The 
Conquest  of  Granada,"  professedly  derived  from  the  MSS.  of  an  imaginary  Fray 
Antonio  Agapida,  and  "  The  Alhambra."  Previous  to  their  appearance  he  had 
been  appointed  secretary  to  the  embassy  at  London,  an  office  as  purelv  compli- 
mentary to  his  literary  ability  as  the  legal  degree  which  he  about  the  same  time 
received  from  the  University  of  Oxford.  Returning  to  the  United  States  in 
1832,  after  seventeen  years'  absence,  he  found  his  name  a  household  word,  and 
himself  universally  honored  as  the  first  American  who  had  won  for  his  countrv 
recognition  on  equal  terms  in  the  literary  republic.  After  the  rush  of  fetes  and 
public  compliments  had  subsided,  he  undertook  a  tour  in  the  Western  prairies, 
and  returning  to  the  neighborhood  of  New  York  built  for  himself  a  delightful 
retreat  on  the  Hudson,  to  which  he  gave  the  name  of  Sunnyside.  His  acquaint- 
ance with  the  New  York  millionaire,  John  Jacob  Astor,  prompted  his  next  im- 
portant work,  "  Astoria,"  a  history  of  the  fur-trading  settlement  founded  by  Astor 
in  Oregon,  deduced  with  singular  literary  ability  from  dry  commercial  records, 
and,  without  labored  attempts  at  word-painting,  evincing  a  remarkable  faculty 
for  bringing  scenes  and  incidents  vividly  before  the  eye.  "  Captain  Bonneville," 
based  upon  the  unpublished  memoirs  of  a  veteran  hunter,  was  another  work  of 
the  same  class.  In  1842  Irving  was  appointed  ambassador  to  Spain.  He  spent 
four  years  in  the  country,  without  this  time  turning  his  residence  to  literary  ac- 
count ;  and  it  was  not  until  two  years  after  his  return  that  Forster's  "  Life  of 
Goldsmith,"  by  reminding  him  of  a  slight  essay  of  his  own  which  he  now  thought 
too  imperfect  by  comparison  to  be  included  among  his  collected  writings,  stimu- 
lated him  to  the  production  of  his  own  biography  of  his  favorite  author.  With- 
out pretensions  to  original  research,  the  book  displays  an  admirable  talent  for 
employing  existing  material  to  the  best  effect.  The  same  may  be  said  of  "  The 
Lives  of  Mahomet  and  his  Successors,"  published  two  years  subsequently.  Here, 
as  elsewhere,  Irving  has  correctly  discriminated  the  biographer's  province  from 
the  historian's,  and  leaving  the  philosophical  investigation  of  cause  and  effect  to 
writers  of  Gibbon's  calibre,  has  applied  himself  to  represent  the  picturesque 
features  of  the  age  as  embodied  in  the  actions  and  utterances  of  its  most  charac- 
teristic representatives.  His  last  days  were  devoted  to  a  biography  of  Washing- 
ton, undertaken  in  an  enthusiastic  spirit,  but  which  the  author  found  exhausting 


WASHINGTON   IRVING  143 

and  his  readers  tame.  His  genius  required  a  more  poetical  theme,  and  indeed 
the  biographer  of  Washington  must  be  at  least  a  potential  soldier  and  statesman. 
Irving  just  lived  to  complete  this  work,  dying  of  heart  disease  at  Sunnyside,  on 
November  28,  1859. 

Although  one  of  the  chief  ornaments  of  American  literature,  Irving  is  not 
characteristically  an  American  author.  Like  most  of  the  transatlantic  writers  of 
his  generation,  he  disappointed  expectation  by  a  scrupulous  conformity  to  ac- 
knowledged European  standards.  The  American  vine  had  not  then  begun  to 
produce  the  looked-for  wild  grapiss.  Irving,  however,  is  one  of  the  few  authors 
of  his  period  who  really  manifests  traces  of  a  vein  of  national  peculiarity  which 
might  under  other  circumstances  have  been  productive.  "  Knickerbocker's  His- 
tory of  New  York,"  although  the  air  of  mock  solemnity  which  constitutes  the 
staple  of  its  humor  is  peculiar  to  no  literature,  manifests,  nevertheless,  a  power  of 
producing  a  distinct  national  type.  Had  circumstances  taken  Irving  to  the 
West  and  placed  him  amid  a  society  teeming  with  quaint  and  genial  eccentric- 
ity, he  might  possibly  have  been  the  first  Western  humorist,  and  his  humor  might 
have  gained  in  depth  and  richness.  In  England,  on  the  other  hand,  everything 
encouraged  his  natural  fastidiousness  ;  he  became  a  refined  writer,  but  by  no 
means  a  robust  one.  At  the  same  time  he  is  too  essentially  the  man  of  his  own 
age  to  pass  for  a  paler  Addison  or  a  more  decorous  Sterne.  He  has  far  more  of 
the  poet  than  any  of  the  writers  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and  his  moralizing, 
unlike  theirs,  is  unconscious  and  indirect.  The  same  poetical  feeling  is  shown  in 
his  biographies  ;  his  subject  is  invariably  chosen  for  its  picturesqueness,  and  what- 
ever is  unessential  to  portraiture  is  thrown  into  the  background.  The  result  is 
that  his  biographies,  however  deficient  in  research,  bear  the  stamp  of  genuine 
artistic  intelligence,  equally  remote  from  compilation  and  disquisition.  In  exe- 
cution they  are  almost  faultless  ;  the  narrative  is  easy,  the  style  pellucid,  and  the 
writer's  judgment  nearly  always  in  accordance  with  the  general  verdict  of  history. 
They  will  not,  therefore,  be  easily  superseded,  and  indeed  Irving's  productions 
are  in  general  impressed  with  that  signet  of  classical  finish  which  guarantees  the 
permanency  of  literary  work  more  surely  than  direct  utility  or  even  intellectual 
power.  This  refinement  is  the  more  admirable  for  being  in  great  part  the  reflec- 
tion of  his  own  moral  nature.  Without  ostentation  or  affectation,  he  was  exqui- 
site in  all  things,  a  mirror  of  loyalty,  courtesy,  and  good  taste  in  all  his  literary 
connections,  and  exemplary  in  all  the  relations  of  domestic  life  which  he  was 
called  upon  to  assume.  He  never  married,  remaining  true  to  the  memory  of  an 
early  attachment  blighted  by  death. 


lU 


ARTISTS  AND   AUTHORS 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER* 

By  President  Charles  F.  Thwing 
(1789-1851) 

IN  the  churchyard  of  Christ's  Church,  in  the 
town  bearing  his  name,  in  the  State  of  New 
York,  rests  all  that  is  mortal  of  James  Feni- 
more  Cooper.  It  is  now  more  than  two  score 
of  years  since  he  died.  The  spot  is  marked  by 
a  simple  slab  of  marble.  In  the  public  ceme- 
tery of  Cooperstown  stands  a  noble  monument 
to  Leather  Stocking.  It  is  crowned  with  a 
figure  of  this  immortal  character.  The  person- 
ality of  Cooper  himself  must,  like  the  human 
body,  gradually  fade  away  ;  but  certain  person- 
alities which  he  brought  into  literature  are  last- 
ing. Cooper  the  man  dies  ;  Cooper  the  novel- 
ist lives. 

Cooper  the  man  and  Cooper  the  author  are 
singularly  united  and  yet  singularly  distinct. 
His  boyhood  was  spent  in  scenes  which  figure 
in  his  novels,  and  certain  of  the  novels  seem  in 
certain  respects  to  be  only  the  projection  of  early  experiences  through  which  he 
passed  or  of  which  he  constantly  heard.  Yet  there  are  many  qualities  manifest  in 
his  writings  which  do  not  seem  to  belong  to  his  personality  and  many  elements 
exhibited  in  his  personality  which  are  not  suggested  by  his  stories. 

Born  in  Burlington,  N.  J.,  September  15,  1789,  he  was  taken,  at  the  age  of 
about  a  year,  to  that  part  of  the  State  of  New  York  which  has  since  become  last- 
ingly associated  with  his  life  and  work.  His  early  home  was  one  of  a  considerable 
degree  of  affluence.  His  father,  near  the  close  of  the  Revolution,  had  become  pos- 
sessed of  large  tracts  of  land  about  the  sources  of  the  Susquehanna,  and  on  the 
borders  of  the  endless  forests  of  Central  New  York  the  Cooper  family  established 
a  home.  In  this  wilderness  James  Fenimore  Cooper  spent  his  boyhood.  This 
settlement  was  not  unlike  the  ordinary  new  settlements  which  are,  at  various 
stages  of  their  history,  found  in  many  of  the  States  of  the  American  Union.  It 
was  picturesque  in  the  richness  and  diversity  of  the  gifts  of  nature.  Game 
abounded  in  water  and  wood.  The  years  he  here  lived  deeply  affected  his  charac- 
ter and  influenced  his  career.  It  is  reported  that  in  later  life  he  said  "he  might 
have  chosen  for  his  subject  happier  periods,  more  interesting  events,  and  possibly 
more  beauteous  scenes,  but  he  could  not  have  taken  any  that  would  lie  so  close 

•  *  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


JAMES    FENIMORE   COOPER  145 

to  his  heart."*  Apparently  the  education  of  books  and  of  formal  teachers  was 
less  influential  than  the  education  of  nature.  In  the  schools  of  Cooperstown  and 
under  the  tuition  of  the  rector  of  St.  Peter's  Church,  Albany — a  graduate  of  an 
English  university— and  at  Yale  College,  he  received  whatever  of  intellectual 
training  he  received  in  his  youth.  A  frontier  town,  however,  offered  few  facili- 
ties in  education,  and  his  career  at  New  Haven  was  cut  short  in  the  midst  by  his 
dismission  for  some  sort  of  a  college  frolic,  and  even  while  he  was  at  Yale  he  con- 
fesses that  he  played  the  first  year  and  did  not  work  much  the  rest  of  the  time. 
The  discipline  he  received,  however,  from  his  English  master  at  Albany  seems  to 
have  been  one  of  the  formative  factors  of  his  early  life. 

In  the  autumn  of  1806,  at  the  age  of  seventeen.  Cooper  found  himself  a  sea- 
man before  the  mast  in  the  ship  Sterling,  endeavoring  to  secure  the  training  nec- 
essary for  entering  the  United  States  Navy  ;  for  to  this  career  it  was  decided  he 
should  devote  himself.  His  entrance  to  the  navy  as  midshipman  in  1808,  his 
marriage  to  a  Miss  De  Lancey  at  Mamaroneck,  Westchester  County,  N.  Y., 
in  181 1,  his  retirement  from  the  navy  a  few  months  after  his  marriage,  and  a 
somewhat  migrator}'^  life  distinguished  by  a  "gentlemanly"  and  unprofitable  pur- 
suit of  agriculture  for  eight  years,  represent  the  chief  facts  and  conditions  of  his 
career  from  the  age  of  nineteen  to  the  age  of  thirty.  Describing  the  last  years  of 
this  period  Professor  Lounsbury  says  :  "  His  thoughts  were  principally  directed  to 
improving  the  little  estate  that  had  come  into  his  possession.  (His  father  died  in 
1809.)  He  planted  trees,  he  built  fences,  he  drained  swamps,  he  planned  a  lawn. 
The  one  thing  which  he  did  not  do  was  to  write." 

On  November  10,  1820,  in  New  York,  was  published  a  novel  in  two  vol- 
umes, bearing  the  title  "  Precaution."  Its  author  was  James  Fenimore  Cooper. 
He  was  thirty-one  years  old.  He  had  had  no  special  literary  training.  But  this 
novel  was  the  beginning  of  the  career  of  one  of  the  most  prolific  of  American 
authors.  Accident  brought  this  career  to  this  apparently  rather  unsuccessful 
man.  Reading  to  his  wife  one  day  a  novel  dealing  with  English  society,  and  dis- 
pleased by  it,  he  made  the  remark,  "I  believe  I  could  write  a  better  story  my- 
self." His  wife  challenged  him;  the  challenge  he  accepted;  the  book  fol- 
lowed. 

There  were  no  novelists  at  the  close  of  the  second  and  the  beginning  of  the 
third  decade  of  our  century.  Hawthorne  was  a  shy  youth  fitting  for  college. 
John  P.  Kennedy,  by  whose  side  Cooper  appears  in  the  picture  of  Washington 
Irving  and  his  friends,  was  entering  the  Maryland  House  of  Delegates,  and  twelve 
years  were  to  elapse  before  the  issue  of  his  story  of  Virginia  countiy  life,  "  Swal- 
low Barn."  Irving  and  Paulding  were  writing  sketches.  Charles  B.  Brown  was 
dead.     Cooper  was  alone  as  a  novelist. 

Destiny  thus  found  Cooper  rather  than  Cooper  his  destiny.  In  the  next 
th'irty  years  he  wrote  no  less  than  sev^enty  books,  or  important  review  articles,  and 

*"  James  Fenimore  Cooper,"  by  Thomas  R.  Lounsbury,  page  5.  To  this,  the  only  biography  of  Cooper, 
and  an  admirable  work,  the  writer  acl<nowledges  his  great  obligations.  On  his  death-bed  Cooper  instructed 
his  family  to  publish  no  life  of  himself. 

10 


146  ARTISTS    AND   AUTHORS 

not  a  few  of  the  books  were  published  in  two  volumes.  So  prolific  a  power  of 
authorship  is  unique  enough,  and  when  considered  in  the  light  of  the  absence  of 
literary  associations  of  the  first  half  of  his  life  seems  absolutely  unique  in  the  his- 
tory of  men  of  letters.  It  is,  of  course,  in  and  through  this  latter  half  of  his  life 
that  Cooper,  both  as  a  man  and  as  an  author,  made  his  contribution  to  the  com- 
mon possessions  of  mankind. 

The  larger  part  of  this  period  he  lived  in  either  New  York  or  Cooperstown. 
Seven  years  of  it  (1826-1833),  however,  were  spent  in  Europe  with  his  family. 
The  whole  of  it  was,  till  at  least  the  last  years,  a  pretty  stormy  time  to  Cooper 
personally,  as  well  as  a  busy  one  in  his  writing.  From  the  memory  of  most  peo- 
ple now  living  the  recollection  of  the  lawsuits  in  which  Cooper  became  involved 
has  faded.  They  were  about  as  numerous  as  the  books  he  wrote,  and  they 
were  of  an  irritating  character  which  would  have  wearied  out  a  man  less  bold 
and  enduring.  Of  this  sort  of  defence  and  offence  he  had  had  a  foretaste  dur- 
ing his  European  residence,  when  he  was  often  called  on  to  defend  his  native 
country  from  an  ignorant  and  depreciative  criticism,  which  was  sixty  years  ago 
far  more  common  than  now.  But  he  who  was  the  defender  of  his  country  when 
abroad,  seems  to  have  become  the  severe  critic  of  his  country  when  at  home. 
"  Condescension  in  foreigners  "  is  bad  enough,  but  condescension  in  a  native  who 
has  lived  abroad  is  far  worse.  On  returning  Cooper  found  an  America,  as  he 
believed,  vastly  deteriorated.  Morals  had  become  base  ;  manners  coarse ;  com- 
merce fallen  into  speculation.  He  was  not  the  man  to  keep  his  sentiments 
locked  up  in  his  heart.  He  wrote,  and  wrote  with  fulness  and  severity  of  his 
country  and  of  his  countrymen.  Thurlow  Weed,  in  1841,  wrote  of  him:  "He 
has  disparaged  American  lakes,  ridiculed  American  scenery,  burlesqued  Ameri- 
can coin,  and  even  satirized  the  American  flag."  He  also  was  so  foolish  as  to 
reply  to  certain  adverse  criticisms  made  on  "  The  Bravo,"  and  in  seeking  to 
bring  down  the  lightning  on  the  head  of  his  reviewer,  he  brought  down  both  thun- 
der and  lightning  on  his  own  head  and  about  his  ears.  It  must  be  added,  too, 
that  he  did  not  live  at  peace  with  his  neighbors.  Discussion  and  litigation  as  to 
a  piece  of  land  which  the  people  of  Cooperstown  believed  had  been  given  by 
Cooper's  father  for  public  uses  was  peculiarly  exasperating.  The  citizens,  in  a 
public  meeting,  resolved,  "  That  we  recommend  and  request  the  trustees  of  the 
Franklin  Library,  in  this  village,  to  remove  all  books  of  which  Cooper  is  the 
author  from  said  library."  That  Cooper  was  legall)^  right  did  not  at  all  lessen 
the  bitterness.  He  attacked  the  newspapers  and  the  newspapers  attacked  him. 
Libel  suits  followed,  which,  too,  he  usually  won.  Criticism  of  his  "  History  of 
the  United  States  Navy  "  aroused  his  indignation,  and  a  trial  which  is  a  cause  cd"^- 
brc  was  the  result.     A  time  of  storm  all  these  years  were  for  Cooper. 

All  this  gives  the  impression  of  a  man  who  was  constantly  "  spoiling  for  a 
fight."  The  impression  is  hardly  just,  however.  He  was  not  quarrelsome  ;  but 
he  was  proud,  possessed  of  strong  passions  and  of  a  deep  sense  of  his  own 
rights.  Whenever,  therefore,  what  he  regarded  as  his  rights  were  struck  at,  he 
struck  back.      For  one  blow  received  another  was  given,  till  what  was  simply  a 


JAMES    FENIMORE   COOPER  147 

continued  litigation  seemed  to  be  his  normal  condition.  But  these  troublesome 
scenes  have  to  be  read  in  the  books,  and  are  not  lingering  in  the  minds  of  his 
few  remaining  contemporaries. 

In  this  period  he  was  constantly  engaged  in  writing.  Not  only  was  the  num- 
ber of  volumes  he  produced  great,  but  the  variety  of  subject  and  treatment  was 
no  less  great.  He  even  wrote  a  drama.  Yet  it  is  to  his  novels  that  one  turns  as 
the  most  precious  result  of  these  years.  Cooper  is,  above  all  other  Americans, 
the  writer  of  the  novel  of  adventure.  In  his  own  day,  at  home  and  abroad,  he 
was  often  called  the  American  Scott.  The  metaphor  is  true  in  several  senses, 
besides  the  one  point  of  both  the  American  and  the  Scotchman  standing  for  the 
story  of  objective  life  and  daring.  Like  Scott,  Cooper  wrote  a  tremendous 
amount  ;  like  Scott,  he  wrote  with  great  rapidity  ;  like  Scott,  he  burdened  his 
books  with  long  introductions  ;  like  Scott,  he  was  careless  in  literary  expression  ; 
like  Scott,  too,  into  the  novel  of  adventure  he  put  a  mighty  literary  power.  It 
must  be  said  that,  unlike  the  Waverley  Novels,  Cooper's  romances  have  little  of 
development,  and  that  to  the  cultivated  reader  Scott  is  more  attractive.  One  can- 
not forbear  saying  that  the  women  of  Cooper's  creation  are  far  inferior  to  Scott's 
— thev  are  women  usually  narrow  in  knowledge,  weak  in  brain  and  heart,  and 
gentle,  if  not  even  insipid,  in  character.  They  are  as  proper  as  well-draped  stat- 
ues, and  almost  as  lifeless.  When  Cooper,  however,  passes  from  this  point  of 
weakness  to  nature  herself,  he  shows  himself  a  master.  His  descriptions  of  nature 
represent  his  finest  work,  and  are  among  the  finest  to  be  found  anywhere.  His 
sea  tales  are  properly  named  ;  they  are  rather  tales  of  the  sea  than  tales  of  seamen. 
The  closer,  too,  is  the  association  of  his  characters  with  the  scenes  of  nature  the 
more  life-like  are  thev.  No  one  has  painted  the  Indian  character,  with  all  its 
varieties  of  intellectual  and  emotional  contrasts,  with  its  honor  and  shame,  its  ten- 
derness and  its  severity,  as  has  the  author  of  "'The  Last  of  the  Mohicans."  No 
one  has  created  a  character  in  American  fiction  more  original,  more  certain  of 
immortality,  or  combining  more  elements  worthy  of  the  novelist's  best  skill  than 
Leather-Stocking. 

Among  his  many  stories  is  large  range  of  excellence.  It  is  usually  considered 
that  of  his  sea  tales  "  The  Red  Rover  "  is  the  best,  the  product  of  his  early  ca- 
reer, and  that  of  the  Indian  stories  "The  Pathfinder"  and  "The  Deerslayer  " 
represent  his  highest  achievement,  as  they  are  the  work  of  the  last  years.  But 
m  thus  distinguishing  certain  books,  no  one  can  forget  that  in  "  The  Spy,"  his 
second  work,  or  "  The  Pioneers,"  or  "  The  Pilot,"  or  "  The  Last  of  the  Mohi- 
cans," Cooper  has  written  books  which  are  among  the  most  popular  and  most 
powerful  of  their  kind. 

James  Fenimore  Cooper,  both  as  a  man  and  as  an  author,  has  entered  largely 
into  American  life  and  literature.  He  was  thoroughly  human.  He  was  strong, 
and  strength  with  eccentricities — and  Cooper  had  these — is  more  attractive  and 
moving  than  mild  weakness  attended  by  the  graces  of  propriety.  He  was 
proud  without  vanity ;  a  good  hater,  yet  beloved  to  devotion  in  his  home  ; 
severe,  yet  holding  himself  to  a  high  standard  of  justice  ;  of  mighty  passions,  yet 


148  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

also  of  mighty  will  for  their  control  ;  loyal  to  what  he  would  esteem  right  princi- 
ple ;  patriotic  though  the  severest  critic  of  his  country  ;  a  Puritan  in  character 
though  condemning  the  Puritan  character  of  New  England  ;  frank,  fearless,  truth- 
ful. He  lacked  tact,  and  for  the  lack  he  paid  the  penalty  of  obloquy  ;  there 
was  little  of  the  compromising  or  conciliatory  in  his  nature.  But  he  had  what 
men  of  tact  are  in  peril  of  lacking — the  heroic  qualities  of  mind  and  heart  and 
will  and  conscience.  He  was  a  faithful  husband,  a  loving  father.  So  scrupu- 
lously careful  was  he  of  the  interests  of  his  children  that  his  own  daughter  says 
she  was  not  permitted  to  read  her  father's  books  before  she  was  eighteen.  His 
influence  is  ev^er  in  favor  of  simple  truth  and  simple  righteousness.  As  Mr. 
James  Russell  Lowell  says  :  "  I  can  conceive  of  no  healthier  reading  for  a  boy, 
or  girl  either,  than  Scott's  novels,  or  Cooper's,  to  speak  only  of  the  dead.  I  have 
found  them  very  good  reading,  at  least,  for  one  young  man,  for  one  middle-aged 
man,  and  for  one  who  is  growing  old.  No,  no — banish  the  Antiquary,  banish 
Leather-Stocking,  and  banish  all  the  world  !  Let  us  not  go  about  to  make  life 
duller  than  it  is," 


WILLIAM   CULLEN  BRYANT* 

By  Richard  Henry  Stoddard 
(1794-1878) 

gg^t^»^.^JHE  life  of  William  Cullen  Bryant  covers  what  to  me  is  the  most  in- 
*^^*^l^^  teresting  period  in  the  history  of  American  letters.  We  cannot  be 
7^^  said  to  have  had  a  literature  when  he  was  born  (certainly  nothing 


-  ^^^ij^isf^  worthy  of  the  name),  and  if  we  have  one  now,  we  owe  whatever  is 
xfiXi.fLlsrfi  of  value  therein  to  three  or  four  writers,  among  whom  he  will  always 
stand  first.  We  were  waiting  for  it,  as  the  English  were  waiting  for  a  new-growth 
in  their  literature,  and  it  came  at  last,  though  later  to  us  than  to  them.  The  same 
seed  blossomed  in  both  countries,  only  it  was  native  there,  being  first  sown  in 
"  Percy's  Reliques,"  while  here  it  was  transplanted  at  second-hand  from  the  pages 
of  a  new  race  of  English  poets,  particularly  Wordsworth.  They  returned  to  nat- 
ure in  literature  ;  we,  who  had  no  literature,  discovered  it  in  nature.  That  both 
the  English  and  ourselves  have  gone  astray  after  other  gods  is  certain,  but  all  is 
not  lost  yet ;  Greek  atheism  will  no  more  satisfy  them  forever,  than  the  "  barbaric 
yawp  "  of  the  rough  will  satisfy  us. 

*  Reprinted  by  permission,  from  Appletons'  Journal. 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT  149 

William  CuUen  Bryant  was  born  at  Cummington,  Mass.,  on  November  3, 
1794.  He  was  happy  in  his  parentage,  his  father,  who  was  a  physician,  being  a 
studious  and  thoughtful  man,  while  his  mother  was  a  woman  of  strong  under- 
standing. The  infant  poet  is  said  to  have  been  remarkable  for  an  immense  head, 
which  was  not  pleasing  in  the  sight  of  his  father,  who  ordered  him  to  be  ducked 
every  morning  in  a  spring  near  the  house.  He  resisted  the  treatment,  as  what 
child  of  tender  years  would  not  ?  but  to  no  purpose — he  was  predestined  to  be 
ducked.  Whether  the  cold  water  arrested  the  cerebral  development,  we  are  not 
told,  but  it  strengthened  his  frail  physique,  and  made  him  a  hardv  little  lad.  He 
began  early  to  write  verses,  a  pursuit  in  which  he  was  encouraged  by  his  father, 
who  directed  him  to  what  were  then  considered  the  best  models,  taught  him  the 
value  of  correctness  of  expression  and  condensation  of  statement,  and  pointed  out 
the  difference  between  true  and  false  eloquence  in  verse.  The  father  of  Pope  is 
said  to  have  performed  the  same  good  offices  for  his  rickety  little  son  :  "  These  be 
good  rhymes,  Alexander  ; "  or  the  reverse,  when  his  couplets  were  unfinished. 
Allibone  states  that  Master  Bryant's  first  effusions  were  translations  from  some 
of  the  Latin  poets,  but,  as  these  were  written  and  printed  in  his  tenth  year,  the  ac- 
count is  scarcely  credible.  He  began  at  ten  years  of  age  to  write  verses  (says  an- 
other authority),  which  were  printed  in  the  Northampton  newspaper  of  that  day 
— the  Hanipshh'e  Gazette. 

When  he  was  fourteen  he  had  verse  enough  on  hand  to  make  a  little  pam- 
phlet volume,  which  was  published  (we  are  not  told  where)  in  1808.  A  second 
edition,  corrected  and  enlarged,  was  brought  out  at  Boston  in  the  ensuing  year. 
It  was  entitled  "The  Embargo  ;  or,  Sketches  of  the  Times — a  Satire,"  and  is  de- 
scribed as  being  a  reflection,  in  heroic  measure,  of  the  anti-Jeffersonian  Federal- 
ism of  New  England.  "  If  the  young  bard,"  said  the'Aristarchus  of  the  Monthly 
Anthology  for  June,  1808  ;  "if  the  young  bard  has  received  no  assistance  in  the 
composition  of  this  poem,  he  certainly  bids  fair,  should  he  continue  to  cultivate 
his  talents,  to  gain  a  respectable  station  on  the  Parnassian  mount,  and  to  reflect 
credit  on  the  literature  of  his  country."  Besides  the  "  Embargo,"  the  volume 
contained  an  "Ode  to  Connecticut,"  and  a  copy  of  verses  entitled  "Drought," 
written  in  his  thirteenth  year. 

In  1 8 10  the  young  poet  entered  Williams  College,  a  sophomore,  and  remained 
two  years.  He  is  said  to  have  distinguished  himself  greatly,  and  we  can  readily 
beheve  it.  We  can  believe  anything  of  the  youth  who  conceived  "  Thanatopsis." 
When  this  noble  poem  was  written  is  variously  stated  ;  one  account  says  in  18 12, 
and  another  181 3.  It  is  of  no  great  consequence,  however,  whether  Brvant  was 
eighteen  or  nineteen  at  the  time.  No  other  poet  ever  wrote  so  profound  a  poem 
at  so  early  an  age.  In  whatever  light  we  consider  it,  "  Thanatopsis"  is  without  a 
parallel  in  the  history  of  literature.  The  train  of  thought  it  awakens  is  the  most 
universal  with  which  the  soul  of  man  can  be  touched,  belonging  to  no  age  and  no 
clime,  but  to  all  climes  and  ages,  and  embracing  all  that  pertains  to  him  on  earth. 
It  is  his  life-hymn  and  his  death-anthem.  It  is  mortality.  Poets  from  immemo- 
rial time  have  brooded  over   life  and  death,  but  none  with  the  seriousness  and 


150  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

grandeur  of  this  young  American.  There  are  moments  in  the  life  of  man  when 
he  stands  face  to  face  with  nature,  and  sees  her  as  she  is,  and  himself  as  he  is,  and 
the  relation  of  everything  in  the  universe.  Such  a  moment  is  fixed  for  all  time 
in  "Thanatopsis." 

It  would  be  interesting  to  know  what  authors  the  3^outhful  student  read  with 
most  avidity  and  attention.  The  influence  of  Pope  is  visible  in  "  The  Em- 
bargo," as  the  influence  of  Wordsworth  is  visible  in  "Thanatopsis."  But  be- 
tween the  writing  of  these  poems — a  space  of  four  or  five  years — other  poets 
than  those  named  must  have  stimulated  his  thoughts  and  colored  his  style. 
Cowper,  we  imagine,  was  one,  and  Akenside,  perhaps,  another.  He  may  have 
read  Scott,  and  Southey,  and  Coleridge,  although  there  are  no  traces  of  either  in 
anything  that  he  has  written.  That  Wordsworth  was  more  to  him  at  this  period 
than  any  other  English  poet,  we  have  the  testimony  of  the  elder  Dana.  "I  shall 
never  forget,"  he  writes,  "  with  what  feeling  my  friend  Bryant,  some  years  ago, 
described  to  me  the  effect  upon  him  of  his  meeting  for  the  first  time  with 
Wordsworth's  ballads.  He  lived,  when  quite  young,  where  but  few  works  of 
poetry  were  to  be  had  ;  at  a  period,  too,  when  Pope  w^as  still  the  great  idol  of 
the  Temple  of  Art.  He  said  that,  upon  opening  Wordsworth,  a  thousand 
springs  seemed  to  gush  up  at  once  in  his  heart,  and  the  face  of  nature,  of  a  sud- 
den, to  change  into  a  strange  freshness  and  life."  Wordsworth  may  have  been 
the  master  of  Bryant,  but  it  was  only  as  Ramsay  was  the  master  of  Burns,  and 
Chaucer  of  Keats,  and  Keats  himself  of  Tennyson.  That  is  to  say,  the  disciple 
found  in  the  master  a  kindred  spirit.  The  eyes  with  which  Brj^ant  looked  on 
nature  were  his  own.  Wordsworth  never  imparted  to  him  "  the  vision  and  the 
faculty  divine."  It  should  be  observed,  also,  that  he  was  favorably  situated  in 
his  youth  ;  .not  like  so  many  poets,  in  the  heart  of  a  great  city,  but  in  the  quiet 
of  the  country,  amid  green  fields  and  woods,  in  sight  of  rivers  and  mountains, 
and  beneath  a  sky  which  was  nowhere  obstructed  by  man.  The  scenery  around 
Cummington  is  said  to  be  beautiful,  and,  immediately  around  the  Bryant  home- 
stead, of  a  rich  pastoral  character.  It  haunted  him  like  a  passion  from  the  be- 
ginning, and  appeared  again  and  again  in  his  poetry,  always  with  a  fresh  and 
added  charm. 

After  leaving  Williams  College,  Mr.  Bryant  studied  law,  first  with  Judge 
Howe,  of  Washington,  and  afterward  with  Mr.  William  Baylies,  of  Bridgewater. 
Admitted  to  the  bar  at  Plymouth  in  1815,  he  practised  one  year  at  Plainfield,  and 
then  removed  to  Great  Barrington,  where,  in  1821,  he  married  Miss  Frances 
Fairchild.  Of  this  lady,  who  survived  until  within  a  few  years,  there  are  several 
graceful  and  touching  memorials  in  the  poetry  of  her  husband.  She  was  the 
ideal  celebrated  in  the  poem  beginning,  "Oh,  fairest  of  the  rural  maids;"  and  it 
is  to  her  that  "The  Future  Life"  and  "The  Life  that  Is"  are  addressed. 
Whether  Mr.  Bryant  was  a  successful  lawyer,  we  are  not  told  ;  but,  as  he  lived 
at  Great  Barrington  nine  )'ears  in  the  practice  of  law,  it  is  to  be  supposed  that 
he  was.  However  this  may  be,  he  still  cultivated  his  poetry,  which  was  now 
bringing  him  into  notice.      "Thanatopsis"  was  published  in    18 16  in  the  North 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT  151 

American  Review,  though  not  precisely  as  we  have  it  now  ;  as  was  also  the  "  In- 
scription for  the  Entrance  to  a  Wood " — a  study  from  nature,  at  Cummington, 
and  the  well-known  lines  "  To  a  Water-fowl,"  which  were  written  while  he  was 
studying  his  profession  at  Bridgewater. 

The  next  four  or  five  years  of  Mr.  Bryant's  life  were  comparatively  unpro- 
ductive ;  at  least,  we  hear  of  nothing  from  his  pen  until  1821,  when  he  delivered 
"  The  Ages  "  before  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  Society  at  Cambridge.  It  was  published 
there  during  the  same  year,  at  the  suggestion  of  some  of  his  friends,  in  a  little 
volume,  which  contained,  in  addition  to  the  three  poems  already  mentioned,  the 
pleasant  pastoral,  "Green  River,"  previously  contributed  to  Dana's  "  Idle  Man." 
That  law  had  by  this  time  become  distasteful  to  him,  we  gather  from  its  conclud- 
ing stanza : 

"  Though  forced  to  drudge  for  the  dregs  of  men, 
And  scrawl  strange  words  with  the  barbarous  pen." 

In  1S24  we  find  him  writing  for  the  Literary  Gazette,  a  favorite  weekly  pub- 
lished at  Boston,  and  edited  by  Theophilus  Parsons.  His  contributions  to  this 
journal  were  "The  Murdered  Traveller,"  "The  Old  Man's  Funeral,"  "The  For- 
est Hymn,"  and  the  spirited  lyric  "  March."  The  next  year  he  removed  to  New 
York,  and  became  one  of  the  editors  of  the  Neiu  York  Review  and  Athejicetim 
Magazine.  It  was  the  wisest  step  that  he  could  have  taken,  although  New  York, 
at  that  time,  was  of  less  importance  in  the  literary  world  than  Boston  or  Phila- 
delphia. The  Review  was  not  a  success,  so  it  was  merged,  in  1826,  in  a  work  of 
similar  character.  The  United  States  Review  and  Literary  Gazette,  which  closed 
with  the  second  volume  in  September,  1827.  Mr.  Bryant's  brief  residence  in 
New  York  had  enlarged  his  circle  of  friends,  among  whom  was  Robert  C.  Sands, 
who  was  associated  with  him  in  the  New  York  Review,  Fitz-Greene  Halleck, 
Gulian  C.  Verplanck,  and  others  ;  and  it  had  added  to  his  popularity  as  a  writer, 
the  excellence  and  variety  of  his  poems  embracing  a  wider  range  of  subjects  than 
he  had  hitherto  chosen.  The  most  noticeable  of  these  were  "The  African  Chief," 
"The  Disinterred  Warrior,"  "The  Indian  Girl's  Lament,"  and  "The  Death  of 
the  Flowers."  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  of  the  last  that  it  is  the  most  exquisite 
poem  of  the  kind  in  the  language — as  perfect,  in  its  way,  as  Keats'  "  Ode  to  Au- 
tumn," which  it  resembles  in  grace  and  delicacy  of  conception,  and  surpasses  in 
fidelity  and  picturesqueness  of  description.  It  is  interesting,  also,  from  the  light 
which  it  sheds  upon  a  painful  incident  in  the  life  of  the  poet — the  early  death  of 
a  beloved  and  beautiful  sister  : 

"  In  the  cold,  moist  earth  we  laid  her,  when  the  forests  cast  the  leaf. 
And  we  wept  that  one  so  lovely  should  have  a  life  so  brief : 
Yet  not  unmeet  it  was  that  one,  like  that  young  friend  of  ours, 
So  gentle  and  so  beautiful,  should  perish  with  the  llowers." 

There  are  other  allusions  to  this  "  fair,  meek  blossom  "  in  Mr.  Bryant's  poems. 
The  sonnet,  "  Consumption,"  was  addressed  to  her  ;  and  she  mingled  with  his 
solemn  musings  in  "The  Past." 


152  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

The  United  States  Review  ceased,  as  we  have  seen,  in  1827.  Its  editor 
seems  to  have  foreseen  its  fate  in  advance,  and  provided  for  it  ;  for,  before  it 
happened,  he  had  become  connected  with  the  Evening  Post.  This  was  in  1826, 
from  which  time  dates  Mr.  Bryant's  connection  with  American  journalism— a 
connection  which  he  never  relinquished,  and  which,  while  it  may  have  lessened 
his  poetic  productiveness,  undoubtedly  added  largely  to  his  influence  with  his 
countrymen.  The  Evening  /'dvAhad  just  completed  the  first  quarter  of  a  century 
of  its  existence,  and  stood  foremost  among  the  journals  of  New  York.  Perhaps 
it  was  the  foreiliost,  all  things  considered.  But,  however  this  may  be,  it  was  a 
journal  for  which  a  gentleman  could  write.  It  was  respectable  and  dignified,  and 
it  was  able  and  sarcastic.  The  age  of  personalities,  through  which  the  American 
press  is  now  passing,  had  not  commenced.  Editors  were  neither  horsewhipped 
in  the  streets,  nor  deserved  to  be,  and  that  impertinent  eavesdropper  and  babbler, 
the  interviewer,  was  unknown.      Happy  age  for  editors — and  readers  ! 

The  lives  of  editors,  like  the  lives  of  most  men  of  letters,  are  not  very  inter- 
esting to  the  world,  whatever  they  may  be  to  themselves  and  their  friends.  They 
are  passed  in  a  routine  from  which  there  is  no  escape,  and,  if  they  are  now  and 
then  enlivened  by  warfare,  it  is  not  usually  of  the  kind  to  attract  the  sympathy  of 
indifferent  spectators.  For  the  most  part,  the  life  editorial  is  a  waste  of  the 
brain,  and  a  weariness  of  the  flesh.  That  it  did  not  prove  so  in  Mr.  Bryant's 
case  is  owing,  no  doubt,  to  his  love  of  literature,  an  inherent  and  unconquerable 
love,  which  never  foi'sook  him,  even  in  the  busiest  years  of  journalism.  While 
still  a  young  man,  and  we  may  suppose  not  an  affluent  one,  for  his  first  position 
on  the  Evening  Post  was  that  of  assistant  editor,  he  wrote  largely  for  The  Talis- 
man, the  entire  contents  of  which  were  furnished  by  himself  and  his  friends 
Sands  and  Verplanck.  It  was  the  best  annual  ever  brought  out  in  America, 
equal,  it  is  said,  to  the  best  of  the  English  annuals,  which  is  not  saying  much 
of  those  of  a  later  date,  but  is  high  praise  as  regards  the  earlier  volumes,  to  which 
ev^en  Scott  did  not  disdain  to  contribute.  Besides  editing  and  writing  for  The 
Talisman,  which  was  published  for  three  years  (1827-29-30),  Mr.  Bryant  fur- 
nished several  papers  for  "Tales  of  the  Glauber  Spa,"  a  collection  of  entertaining 
stories,  the  work  of  Sands,  Verplanck,  Paulding,  Leggett,  Miss  Sedgwick,  and 
himself.  This  was  published  in  1832,  as  was  also  the  first  collected  edition  of  his 
poems.  In  1834  he  took  a  vacation  from  his  editorial  labors,  and  sailed  with  his 
family  for  Europe,  leaving  the  Evening  Post  in  charge  of  Leggett.  He  resided 
in  Italy  and  Germany,  which  were  not  so  overrun  with  travelling  Americans  as 
at  present,  and  were  all  the  more  pleasant  to  a  quiet  family  on  that  account.  It 
was  his  intention  to  remain  abroad  three  years,  but  the  sudden  illness  of  Leggett, 
which  threatened  to  result  disastrously  to  the  Evening  Post,  compelled  him  to  re- 
turn in  1836. 

In  1840  Mr.  Bryant  published  a  new  collection  of  his  poetical  writings — 
"The  Fountain,  and  other  Poems,"  and,  during  the  next  year,  visited  the  South- 
ern States,  and  lived  for  a  time  in  East  Florida.  "  The  White-footed  Deer,  and 
other  Poems,"  appeared  in  1844.     A  year  later,  he  visited  England  and  Scotland 


WILLIAM    CULLEN    BRYANT  153 

for  the  first  time.  That  the  mother-land  impressed  him,  we  may  be  sure  ;  yet 
it  is  worthy  of  remark  that  nothing  which  he  saw  there — no  place  which  he 
visited,  and  no  association  it  awakened — is  recorded  in  his  verse.  We  have 
Italian  poems  from  him,  or  poems  in  which  Italian  localities  are  indicated,  and 
we  have,  if  not  German  poems,  several  spirited  translations  from  German  song. 
But  we  recall  nothing,  in  his  verse,  of  which  England  alone  was  the  inspiration. 
Yet  he  was,  and  is,  admired  in  the  land  of  his  fathers.  A  proof  of  this  fact  is 
contained  in  the  second  volume  of  Beattie's  "  Life  of  Campbell."  "  I  went  with 
him  one  evening,"  says  the  writer  (May  29,  1841),  "to  the  opening  of  the  Ex- 
hibition, in  Suffolk  Place.  It  had  been  arranged  that  he  should  read  something, 
and  he  chose  the  '  Thanatopsis '  of  Bryant.  A  deep  silence  followed  ;  the  audi- 
ence crowded  round  him  ;  but  when  he  came  to  the  closing  paragraph,  his  ad- 
miration almost  choked  his  voice  :  '  Nothing  finer  had  ever  been  written  ! '  " 

The  first  illustrated  edition  of  Mr.  Bryant's  poetical  works  was  published  in 
1846,  at  Philadelphia.  It  was  a  creditable  piece  of  art  work,  considering  the 
then  condition  of  art  in  America — the  designs  being  drawn  by  Leutz,  an  accom- 
plished academician  of  the  Diisseldorf  school,  who  strove  to  make  up  in  vigor 
and  picturesqueness  what  he  lacked  in  sentiment  and  feeling.  A  second  illus- 
trated edition  was  issued  a  few  years  later  in  New  York.  The  illustrations  were 
drawn  on  wood,  many  by  Birket  Foster,  and  the  engraving  and  printing  were 
done  in  England.  This  method  of  producing  a  fine  edition  of  a  favorite  Ameri- 
can writer  would  hardly  suit  a  protectionist,  but,  then,  Mr.  Bryant  was  not  a 
protectionist — as  who  is  in  literature  ? 

The  last  twenty-five  years  of  Mr.  Bryant's  life  differed  but  little  from  those 
which  preceded  them.  That  is  to  sa}',  they  were  spent  in  journalism,  diversified, 
now  and  then,  by  the  publication  of  a  new  volume  of  poems,  and  by  several 
journeys  on  the  Continent.  The  result  of  these  journeys  was  given  to  the 
public  in  the  shape  of  letters  in  the  Evening  Post,  which  letters  have  been  col- 
lected in  two  or  three  volumes.  Mr.  Bryant's  prose  is  admirable — a  model  of 
good  English,  simple,  manly,  felicitous.  That  its  excellence  has  not  been  uni- 
versally recognized  and — what  generally  follows  recognition  in  this  country — 
imitated,  is  owing  to  several  circumstances  ;  as  that  it  originally  appeared  in  the 
crowded  columns  of  a  dailv  journal  ;  that  the  American's  appetite  for  works  of 
travel  demands  more  stimulating  food  than  Mr.  Bryant  chose  to  give  it,  and  that 
his  poetry  has  overshadowed  everything  else  that  he  did.  Few  believe  that  a 
poet  can  write  well  in  prose,  and  those  who  do,  prefer  his  poetry  to  his  prose. 
The  preference  is  a  just  one,  but  it  proves  nothing,  for  literary  history  shows 
that  a  good  poet  is  always  a  good  prose -writer. 

Mr.  Bryant's  last  great  labor — it  is  almost  superfluous  to  state — was  a  new 
translation  of  Homer.  The  task  was  worthy  of  him  ;  for,  though  it  has  been 
performed  many  times,  it  has  never  been  performed  so  well  before.  Scores  have 
tried  their  hands  at  it,  from  Chapman  down  ;  but  all  have  failed  in  some  impor- 
tant particular  —  Pope,  perhaps,  most  of  all.  Lord  Derby's  version  of  the 
"  Iliad"  was  the  best  before  Mr.  Bryant's;  it  is  second  best  now,  and  will  soon 


154 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


be  as  antiquated  as  Pope's,  or  Cowper's,  or  Chapman's.  No  English  poet  ever 
undertook  and  performed  so  great  a  task  as  this  of  Mr.  Bryant's  so  late  in  life. 
It  is  like  Homer  himself  singing  in  his  old  age. 


THOMAS    CARLYLE 

By   W.  Wallace 


T' 


(1795-1881) 

»HOMAS  Carlyle  was  born  December  4,  1795,  at 
Ecclesfechan,  in  the  parish  of  Hoddam,  Annan- 
dale,  Dumfriesshire,  a  small  Scottish  market-town, 
the  Entipfuhl  of  "  Sartor  Resartus,"  six  miles  inland 
from  the  Solway,  and  about  sixteen  by  road  from 
Carlisle.  He  was  the  second  son  of  James  Carlyle, 
stone-mason,  but  his  first  son  by  his  second  wife,  Mar- 
garet Aitken.  James  CarH'le,  who  came  of  a  family 
which,  although  in  humble  circumstances,  was  an  off- 
shoot of  a  Boi-'der  clan,  was  a  man  of  great  physical 
and  moral  strength,  of  fearless  independence,  and  of, 
in  his  son's  opinion,  "  a  natural  faculty  "  equal  to  that 
of  Burns  ;  and  Margaret  Aitken  was  "  a  woman  of 
the  fairest  descent,  that  of  the  pious,  the  just,  and  the 
wise."  Frugal,  abstemious,  ]3rudent,  though  not  niggardly,  James  Carlyle  was 
prosperous  according  to  the  times,  the  conditions  of  his  trade,  and  the  standard 
of  Ecclesfechan.  He  was  able,  therefore,  to  give  such  of  his  sons  (he  had  a 
family  of  ten  children  in  all,  five  sons  and  five  daughters)  as  showed  an  aptitude 
for  culture  an  excellent  Scottish  education.  Thomas  seems  to  have  been  taught 
his  letters  and  elementary  reading  by  his  mother,  and  arithmetic  by  his  father. 
His  home-teaching  was  supplemented  by  attendance  at  the  Ecclesfechan  school, 
where  he  was  "  reported  complete  in  English  "  at  about  seven,  made  satisfactory 
progress  in  arithmetic,  and  took  to  Latin  with  enthusiasm.  Thence  he  pro- 
ceeded, in  1805,  to  Annan  Academy,  where  he  learned  to  read  Latin  and  French 
fluently,  "  some  geometry,  algebra,  arithmetic  thoroughly  well,  vague  outlines  of 
geography,  Greek  to  the  extent  of  the  alphabet  mainly."  His  first  two  years  at 
Annan  Academy  were  among  the  most  miserable  in  his  life,  from  his  being  bul- 
lied by  some  of  his  fellow-pupils,  whom  he  describes  as  "  coarse,  unguided,  tyr- 
annous cubs."  But  he  "  revolted  against  them,  and  gave  them  shake  for  shake." 
In  his  third  year,  Carlyle  had  his  first  glimpse  of  Edward  Irving;  who  was  five 
years  his  senior,  and  had  been  a  pupil  at  Annan  Academy,  but  was  then  attend- 
ing classes  at  Edinburgh  University.      In  November,  1809,  Carlyle  himself  en- 


THOiMAS   CARLYLE  155 

tered  that  university,  travelling  on  foot  all  the  way,  a  hundred  miles,  between 
Ecclesfechan  and  the  Scottish  capital.  Except  in  one  department,  Carlyle's  col- 
lege curriculum  was  not  remarkable.  In  "  the  classical  field  "  he  describes  him- 
self "truly  as  nothing,"  and  learned  to  read  Homer  in  the  original  with  difficulty. 
He  preferred  Homer  and  .Eschylus  to  all  other  classical  authors,  found  Tacitus 
and  Virgil  "really  interesting,"  Horace  "egotistical,  leichtfertig,"  and  Cicero  "a 
windy  person,  and  a  weariness."  Nor  did  he  take  much  to  metaphysics  or  moral 
philosophy.  In  geometr)'-,  however,  he  excelled,  perhaps  because  Professor  (sub- 
sequently Sir  John)  Leslie,  "  alone  of  my  professors  had  some  genius  in  his  busi- 
ness, and  awoke  a  certain  enthusiasm  in  me."  But  even  in  the  mathematical 
class  he  took  no  prize. 

In  1813  Carlyle's  attendance  at  the  Arts  course  in  Edinburgh  University 
came  to  an  end,  and  he  began  formal,  though  fitful,  preparation  for  the  ministry 
of  the  Church  of  Scotland  by  enrolling  himself,  on  November  i6th  of  the  same 
year,  as  a  student  at  its  Divinity  Hall.  In  the  summer  of  18 14  he  competed  suc- 
cessfully at  Dumfries  for  the  mathematical  mastership  of  Annan  Academy.  The 
post  was  worth  only  between  ^60  and  £^0  a  year  ;  but  it  enabled  Carlyle,  who 
was  as  frugal  as  his  parents,  to  relieve  his  father  of  the  expense  of  his  support, 
and  to  save  a  few  pounds.  Meanwhile  he  read  widely,  and  wrote  of  his  reading 
at  great  length,  and  with  considerable  power  of  satiric  characterization,  to  some 
of  his  college  friends.  But  he  found  himself  "abundantly  lonesome,  uncomfort- 
able, and  out  of  place  "  in  Annan,  and  from  the  first  disliked  teaching ;  while  his 
"  sentiments  on  the  clerical  profession  "  were  "  mostly  of  the  unfavorable  kind." 

In  1 816  Carlyle  accepted  the  post  of  assistant  to  the  teacher  of  the  parish 
(or  grammar)  school  of  Kirkcaldy,  with  "  an  emolument  rated  about  a  hundred  a 
year,"  and  all  actual  scholastic  duties  to  perform.  This  change  brought  him  into 
intimate  relations  with  Edward  Irving,  who,  having  acquired  a  reputation  as  a 
teacher  in  Haddington,  had  been  induced  by  the  patrons  of  an  adventure  school, 
in  Kirkcaldy,  to  undertake  the  management  of  it.  The  two,  though  professionally 
rivals,  became  fast  friends,  and  read  and  made  excursions  into  different  parts  of 
Scotland  together.  Carlyle  was  also  introduced  by  Irving  to  various  Kirkcaldy 
families,  including  that  of  Mr.  Martin,  the  parish  minister,  one  of  whose  daugh- 
ters his  friend  subsequently  married.  He  himself  became  attached  to  an  ex-pupil 
of  Irving's,  a  Miss  Margaret  Gordon,  with  some  of  whose  graces  he  afterward 
endowed  the  dark  and  fickle  Blumine,  of  "  Sartor  Resartus."  She  reciprocated 
Carlyle's  affection,  but  the  aunt  with  whom  she  lived  put  a  stop  to  some  talk  of 
an  engagement. 

Carlyle  found  the  people  of  Kirkcaldy  more  to  his  mind  than  those  of  Annan  ; 
but  in  two  years  the  work  of  teaching  became  altogether  intolerable  to  him,  al- 
though he  did  it  conscientiously.  Successful  opposition  sprung  up  to  Irving  and 
himself,  moreover,  in  the  shape  of  a  third  school.  Irving  resolved  to  leave  Kirk- 
caldy, and,  in  September,  1818,  Carlyle  wrote  to  his  father,  who  had  now  given  up 
business  in  Ecclesfechan  and  taken  tlie  farm  of  Mainhill,  about  two  miles  distant, 
that,  having  saved  about  £-jo,  he  purposed  removing  to  Edinburgh,  where  he 


15G  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

thought  he  "could,"  perhaps,  find  private  teaching  to  support  him,  till  he  could 
fall  into  some  other  way  of  doing.  He  had  now  totally  abandoned  all  thoughts 
of  entering  the  ministry. 

Carlyle  removed  to  Edinburgh  in  November,  1818.  His  prospects  were  for 
some  time  dubious ;  he  even  entertained  the  idea  of  emigrating  to  America. 
Ultimately,  however,  he  obtained  fairly  regular  and  well-paid  private  teaching. 
An  introduction  to  Dr.  (afterward  Sir  David)  Brewster,  the  editor  of  the  "  Edin- 
burgh Encyclopaedia,"  led  to  his  writing  articles,  chiefly  biographical  and  geographi- 
cal, for  that  work,  at  "  bread-and-butter  wages,"  and  subsequently  to  his  trans- 
lating Legendre's  "  Elements  of  Geometry  "  from  the  French  for  ^50.  At  the 
beginning  of  the  session  of  18 19,  he  enrolled  in  the  class  of  Scots  Law,  with  the 
intention  of  becoming  an  advocate.  But  he  found  law  as  uncongenial  a  study  as 
divinity.  Till  1822  he  lived  in  various  lodgings  in  Edinburgh,  finding  his  chief 
relief  from  tutorial  drudgery  in  visits  to  his  parents  in  Dumfriesshire.  His 
health,  which  had  suffered  from  too  close  application  to  study,  was  at  times 
"  most  miserable  ; "  he  was  in  a  low  fever  for  two  weeks,  "  was  harassed  by 
sleeplessness,"  and  began  to  be  tortured  by  his  life-long  foe,  dyspepsia.  At  the 
same  time  his  mind  was  perplexed  with  doubt  on  religious  matters,  regarding 
which  he  seems  to  have  unburdened  himself  solely  to  Irving,  who  was  then  as- 
sistant to  Dr.  Chalmers,  in  Glasgow.  For  a  period  he  was  "totally  irreligious." 
This  struggle  terminated  in  June,  182 1,  "all  at  once,"  and  when  he  was  walking 
along  Leith  Walk  (the  Rue  St.  Thomas  de  I'Enfer  of  "  Sartor  Resartus  "),  in 
what  he  regarded  as  his  "  spiritual  new  birth."  He  was  now  absorbed  in  Ger- 
man literature,  especially  the  writings  of  Schiller  and  Goethe.  The  latter,  indeed, 
had  a  more  abiding  influence  on  him  than  any  other  author. 

In  June,  182 1,  also,  occurred  his  introduction,  through  Irving,  to  Miss  Jane 
Baillie  Welsh  (1801-66),  only  daughter  of  Dr.  John  Welsh,  medical  practitioner 
in  Haddington,  who  had  died  two  years  before,  leaving  his  daughter  sole  heiress 
of  the  small  estate  of  Craigenputtock,  sixteen  miles  from  the  town  of  Dumfries. 
Miss  Welsh,  who  was  descended  through  her  father  from  John  Knox,  was  then 
living  in  Haddington  with  her  mother,  who  claimed  kindred  with  the  patriot 
Wallace,  and,  according  to  Carlyle,  "  narrowly  missed  being  a  woman  of  genius." 
Miss  Welsh  had  been  the  private  pupil  of  Irving  w^hen  he  was  a  teacher  in  Had- 
dington, and  the  result  of  the  acquaintance  thus  brought  about  was  a  passionate 
attachment.  They  would,  indeed,  have  been  married,  but  for  Irving's  engage- 
ment to  Miss  Martin.  The  introduction  of  Carlyle  to  Miss  Welsh,  then  twenty 
years  of  age,  led  to  a  correspondence  between  them  on  literary  matters.  After  a 
time,  Carlyle  attempted  to  adopt  the  tone  of  a  lover.  This,  however,  she  per- 
emptorily forbade,  although  she  refused  other  suitors. 

Early  in  1822,  Irving,  who  was  on  the  point  of  entering  on  the  pastorate  of 
the  Caledonian  Chapel,  in  Hatton  Garden,  London,  recommended  Carlyle  as 
tutor  to  the  three  sons  of  Mr.  BuUer,  a  retired  Anglo-Indian.  The  salary  offered 
was  ;^200  a  year.  Carlyle,  who  had  previously  declined  the  editorship  of  a  Dun- 
dee newspaper,  accepted  the  offer  ;  and  two  of  the  three,  Charles  Buller  and  Ar- 


THOMAS   CARLYLE  157 

thur,  came  to  Edinburgh  in  the  spring,  to  be  under  his  care  while  attending 
classes  at  the  university.  Carlyle  found  his  duties  pleasant,  and  was  now  able  to 
give  substantial  pecuniary  aid  to  his  family,  particularly  as  regarded  the  educa- 
tion of  his  younger  brother  John,  who  subsequently  became  a  physician,  but  is 
better  known  as  the  translator  of  Dante's  "  Inferno"  (1849).  Carlyle,  after  con- 
templating a  history  of  the  British  commonwealth,  and  a  novel  in  association 
with  Miss  Welsh,  arrang-ed  to  write  a  "  Life  of  Schiller"  for  Mr.  Tavlor,  the 
proprietor  of  the  London  Magazine,  and  a  translation  of  the  "  Wilhelm  Meister  " 
of  Goethe  for  Mr.  Boyd,  an  Edinburgh  publisher.  These  two  enterprises  fully 
occupied  his  leisure  while  he  was  engaged  as  a  tutor  to  the  BuUers,  whose  par- 
ents, after  spending  the  winter  of  1822  in  Edinburgh,  removed  in  the  following 
spring  to  Kinnaird  House,  near  Dunkeld,  on  the  Tay. 

Carlyle  paid  his  first  visit  to  London  in  June,  1824,  whither  the  Bullers  had 
gone,  and  although  his  engagement  with  them  was  abruptly  broken  off,  he  re- 
mained there  till  March,  1825,  superintending  the  publication  in  book  form  of 
his  "  Life  of  Schiller."  At  this  time  he  received  the  first  of  a  series  of  letters 
from  Goethe  and  made  the  acquaintance  of  Coleridge,  Thomas  Campbell,  Allan 
Cunningham,  Proctor,  and  other  literary  notabilities.  On  March  26,  1825,  he 
removed  to  the  farm  of  Hoddam  Hill,  about  two  miles  from  Mainhill,  which  he 
had  leased  ;  his  brother  Alexander  doing  the  practical  work  of  farming,  while  he 
himself  translated  German  romances.  Miss  Welsh  now  consented  to  become  his 
wife,  after  a  lengthened  correspondence.  In  1826  he  quarrelled  with  his  land- 
lord, his  father  gave  up  his  farm,  and  both  removed  to  Scotsbrig,  another  farm 
in  the  vicinity  of  Ecclesfechan.  The  marriage  between  Carlyle  and  Miss  W^elsh 
took  place  on  October  17,  1826,  at  her  grandfather's  house  at  Templand,  Dum- 
friesshire, and  they  at  once  settled  in  21  Comely  Bank,  Edinburgh.  Here  Car- 
lyle completed  four  volumes  of  translations  from  Tieck,  Musaeus,  and  Richter, 
which  were  published  under  the  title  of  "  German  Romance,"  and  commenced  a 
didactic  novel,  but  burned  his  manuscript.  An  introduction  from  Proctor  to  Jef- 
frey led  to  his  becoming  a  contributor  to  the  Edinbtirgh  Review,  his  first  article, 
on  Jean  Paul  Richter,  appearing  in  June,  1827.  The  same  year  he  failed  in  his 
candidature  for  the  chair  of  moral  philosophy  in  the  University  of  St.  Andrews, 
in  succession  to  Dr.  Chalmers.  Various  subsequent  attempts  to  obtain  an  aca- 
demic position  for  Carlyle  met  with  no  better  success. 

In  May,  1828,  the  Carlyles  removed  to  Mrs.  Carlyle's  little  property  of  Craig- 
enputtock,  which,  in  a  letter  to  Goethe,  he  described  as  "  the  loneliest  nook  in 
Britain,  six  miles  removed  from  anyone  likely  to  visit  me,"  and  there  they  lived 
for  about  six  years.  Carlyle  subsisted  during  this  period  by  writing  for  a  number 
of  reviews,  including  the  Edinburgh,  the  Westminster,  the  Foreign  Quarterly, 
and  Eraser  s  Magazine.  The  chief  of  the  essays  which  he  produced  at  Craigen- 
puttock  are  those  on  Burns,  Samuel  Johnson,  Goethe,  Voltaire,  Diderot,  and 
Schiller.  He  also  wrote  a  "  History  of  German  Literature,"  the  best  parts  of 
which  were  subsequently  published  in  the  form  of  essays  ;  and  in  1833-34  there 
appeared,  by  instalments  in  Eraser'' s  Magazine,  "  Sartor  Resartus,"  his  most  char- 


158  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

acteristic  work,  the  fantastic  hero  of  which,  Diogenes  Teufelsdrockh,  illustrates 
in  his  life  and  opinions  the  mystical  and  grotesque  "  Philosophy  of  Clothes." 
"  Sartor  Resartus  "  is  notable  in  the  literary  history  of  Carlyle  as  revealing  the 
Germanization  of  his  mind,  and  his  abandonment  of  the  comparatively  simple 
diction  of  his  earlier  essays  for  the  thoroughly  individual  styla  of  his  later  works 
• — eruptive,  ejaculatory,  but  always  powerful,  and  often  rising  to  an  epic  sublim- 
ity. Life  at  Craigenputtock  was  varied  on  the  part  of  Carlyle  by  occasional 
visits  to  Edinburgh,  in  one  of  which  the  idea  of  writing  his  "  French  Revolu- 
tion "  occurred  to  him  ;  by  a  residence  of  six  months  in  London,  during  which 
he  made  the  acquaintance  of  John  Stuart  Mill  and  John  Sterling;  and  by  visits 
from  old  friends  like  Jeffrey,  and  new  admirers  like  Emerson.  In  1830  Carlyle 
was  reduced  to  great  straits  ;  and  he  had  to  borrow  _;^5o  from  Jeffrey  for  the  ex- 
penses of  his  journey  to  London,  although  he  declined  to  accept  an  annuity  of 
;i^ioo  from  the  same  source. 

Having  by  1834  again  saved  ^200,  Carlyle  resolved  to  try  his  fortune  in  Lon- 
don, and  on  June  loth  established  himself  in  the  house,  5  Cheyne  Row,  Chelsea, 
in  which  he  lived  till  the  day  of  his  death.  Here  he  settled  down  to  the  writing 
of  his  "  French  Revolution,"  which  appeared  in  1837.  This  enterprise  was  also 
put  an  end  to  in  1835,  owing  to  the  destruction,  by  a  servant-girl,  of  all  but  four 
or  five  leaves  of  the  manuscript  of  the  first  volume,  which  had  been  lent  to  John 
Stuart  Mill.     Carlyle  accepted  /'loo  from  Mill  as  compensation  for  his  loss. 

In  the  years  1837,  1838,  1839,  and  1840,  Carlyle  lectured  to  considerable,  yet 
select,  audiences  on  "  German  Literature,"  "  The  Successive  Periods  of  European 
Culture,"  "  The  Revolutions  of  Modern  Europe,"  and  "  Heroes,  Hero-worship, 
and  the  Heroic  in  History."  Carlyle's  yearly  earnings  from  these  lectures,  the 
last  series  of  which  had  been  published,  varied  between  ^135  and  ;^300,  and 
maintained  him  and  his  wife  till  the  "  French  Revolution  "  not  only  established 
his  reputation  as  a  literary  genius  of  the  highest  order,  and  as,  in  Goethe's  phrase, 
"  a  new  moral  force,"  but  placed  him  beyond  the  possibility  of  want.  Yet,  until 
late  in  life,  his  annual  income  from  literature  was  not  more  than  ;^400.  In  1838 
appeared  "  Sartor  Resartus  "  in  book  form,  and  the  first  edition  of  his  "  Miscel- 
lanies." The  following  year,  Carlyle,  who  was  at  one  time  averse  to  the  idea  of 
becoming  a  personal  force  in  politics,  published  the  first  of  a  series  of  attacks  on 
the  shams  and  corruptions  of  modern  society,  under  the  title  of  "  Chartism." 
This  he  followed  in  1843  with  "  Past  and  Present,"  and  in  1850  with  "  Latter- 
day  Pamphlets,"  which  proved  among  other  things  that,  if  he  did  not  quite  ap- 
prove of  slavery,  he  disapproved  of  the  manner  in  which  it  had  been  abolished  in 
the  British  dominions.  In  1845  appeared  "Cromwell's  Letters  and  Speeches," 
perhaps  the  most  successful  of  all  his  works,  inasmuch  as  it  completely  revolu- 
tionized the  public  estimate  of  its  subject.  In  1851  he  published  a  biography  of 
his  friend,  John  Sterling.  From  this  time  Carlyle  gave  himself  up  entirely  to 
his  largest  work,  "The  History  of  Frederick  II.,  commonly  called  Frederick  the 
Great,"  the  first  two  volumes  of  which  were  published  in  1858,  and  which  was 
concluded  in  1865.     The  preparation  of  this  book  led  Carlyle  to  make  two  ex- 


MhS.  AtUNOHAM   PINXIT. 


CARLYLE    AT    CHELSEA. 


THOMAS   CARLYLE  159 

cursions  to  the  Continent,  which,  with  a  3'achting  trip  to  Ostend,  two  tours  in 
Ireland  (on  which  he  intended  to  write  a  book  based  on  a  diary  that  was  pub- 
Hshed  after  his  death),  and  regular  visits  to  his  kindred  and  friends  in  Scotland, 
formed  the  chief  distractions  from  his  literary  labors.  Among  the  few  public 
movements  with  which  Carlvle  identified  himself  was  that  which  resulted  in  the 
establishment  of  the  London  Library,  in  1839.  ^"^  August,  1866,  he  also  al- 
lowed himself  to  be  elected  chairman  of  the  committee  for  the  defence  of  Mr. 
Eyre,  who  had  been  recalled  from  his  post  of  Governor  of  Jamaica  on  the 
ground  of  his  having  shown  unnecessary  severity  in  suppressing  a  negro  insurrec- 
tion which  had  broken  out  in  October  of  the  previous  year,  or,  as  Carlyle  put  it, 
for  having  "saved  the  West  Indies  and  hanged  one  incendiary  mulatto,  well 
worth  the  gallows." 

On  November  11,  1865,  Carlyle  was  elected  lord  rector  of  Edinburgh  Uni- 
versitv,  by  a  majority  of  657  votes  over  310  recorded  for  Mr.  Disraeli.  On  April 
2,  1866,  the  ceremony  of  his  installation  took  place  amid  extraordinary  demon- 
stations  of  enthusiasm,  when  he  delivered  an  address  in  which  he  embodied  his 
moral  experiences  in  the  form  of  advice  to  the  younger  members  of  his  audience. 
The  success  attending  this  visit  to  Edinburgh  was  quite  obliterated  by  the  news, 
which  reached  him  in  Dumfries,  of  the  death,  on  April  21st,  of  Mrs.  Carlyle,  as 
she  was  driving  in  her  carriage  in  Hyde  Park.  Carlyle's  grief  developed  into  re- 
morse when  he  discovered,  from  certain  of  her  letters,  and  from  a  journal  which 
she  kept,  that  during  a  period  of  her  married  life  his  irritability  of  temper  and  un- 
conscious want  of  consideration  for  her  wishes,  had  caused  her  much  misery  and 
even  ill-health,  which  she  studiously  concealed  from  him.  It  has  also  been  de- 
monstrated, by  the  letters  and  memorials  of  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle,  that  in  the  years 
1855  and  1856  they  were  somewhat  estranged,  owing  to  Carlyle's  liking  for  the 
society  of  Harriet,  Lady  Ashburton.  After  the  death  of  Lady  Ashburton,  there 
were  no  differences  between  them,  except  such  as  might  be  expected  in  the  case 
of  two  persons  of  irritable  and  high-strung  natures,  and  of  uncompromising  ve- 
racity. These  memorials  are  also  of  note  as  proving  Mrs.  Carlyle  to  have  been 
one  of  the  keenest  critics,  most  brilliant  letter-writers,  and  most  accomplished  of 
women  of  her  time. 

Carlvle  wrote  no  important  work  after  his  wife's  death,  although  after  a  visit 
to  Mentone  in  1867,  where  he  partially  composed  his  "  Personal  Reminiscences," 
he  settled  down  to  his  old  life  in  London.  In  August,  1867,  there  appeared  in 
Macmillaiis  Magazine  his  view  of  British  democracy,  under  the  title  of  "  Shooting 
Niagara."  He  prepared  a  special  edition  of  his  collected  works,  and  added  to 
them,  in  1875,  a  fresh  volume  containing  "The  Early  Kings  of  Norway"  and  an 
essay  on  the  "  Portraits  of  John  Knox."  On  November  18,  1870,  he  wrote  a  let- 
ter to  the  Times  on  the  "  Franco-German  Question,"  defending  the  attitude  of 
Germany.  He  expressed  privately  strong  opposition  to  the  Irish  policy  of  Mr. 
Gladstone.  In  February,  1874,  he  was  offered  and  accepted  the  Prussian  Order 
of  Merit  in  recognition  of  his  having  written  the  "  Life  of  Frederick  the  Great," 
who  founded  the  Order.     Toward  the  end  of  the  same  year  Mr.  Disraeli  offered 


KiO  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

him  the  Grand  Cross  of  the  Bath  (with  the  alternative  of  a  baronetcy)  and  a  pen- 
sion of  "an  amount  equal  to  a  good  fellowship,"  but  he  declined  both. 

His  eightieth  birthday,  December  4,  1875,  brought  Carlyle  many  tributes  of 
respect,  including  a  gold  medal  from  a  number  of  Scottish  admirers,  and  "  a  noble 
and  most  unexpected  "  note  from  Prince  Bismarck.  On  May  5,  1877,  h*^  published 
a  short  letter  in  the  Times,  referring  to  a  rumor  that  Mr.  Disraeli,  as  Premier, 
meditated  forcing  on  a  "  Philo-Turk  war  against  Russia,"  and  protesting  against 
any  such  design.  This  was  his  last  public  act.  On  February  5,  1881,  he  died  at 
his  house  in  Chelsea.  A  burial  in  Westminster  Abbey  was  offered,  but  in  ac- 
cordance with  his  own  wish,  he  was  laid  in  the  churchyard  of  Ecclesfechan,  beside 
his  kindred. 

The  time  has  not  yet  come  for  the  passing  of  a  final  judgment  on  Carlyle's 
position  in  British  literature.  He  was,  above  all  things,  a  prophet  in  the  guise 
of  a  man  of  letters,  who  predicted  the  reverse  of  smooth  things  for  his  country 
and  for  the  world  ;  and  it  has  yet  to  be  seen  if  his  predictions  will  be  fulfilled. 
But  it  may  be  said  even  now,  and  without  risk  of  contradiction,  that,  for  good  or 
evil,  he  exerted  a  greater  influence  on  British  literature  during  the  middle  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  and,  through  that  literature,  on  the  ethical,  religious,  and 
political  beliefs  of  his  time,  than  any  of  his  contemporaries  ;  that,  as  a  humorist, 
using  humor  seriously  and  as  a  weapon  for  the  enforcement  of  his  opinions,  he 
has  no  superior,  combining  in  himself  what  is  best  in  Dunbar,  Burns,  Rabelais, 
and  Swift ;  that,  as  a  master  of  the  graphic  in  style,  he  has  no  rival  and  no  second 
— showing  an  equal  facility  in  photographing  nature,  and  in  grasping  and  pre- 
senting in  appropriate  phraseology  the  salient  points  of  personal  character  as  ex- 
hibited in  expression,  habits,  features,  build,  and  dress. 

Of  Carlyle  as  a  man,  it  is  also  permissible  to  say  that,  irritable,  impatient, 
intolerant,  fiercely  proud,  occasionally  hasty  in  his  judgments  though  he  was,  pre- 
serving to  the  last,  nor  caring  to  get  rid  of,  certain  Scottish  and  Annandale  rus- 
ticities of  manner  and  mental  attitude,  no  one  was  ever  more  essentially  self-con- 
trolled, patient,  and  humble  than  he,  or  ever  faced  the  real  misfortunes  of  life 
with  a  calmer  courage  ;  that  he  was  as  incapable  of  conscious  injustice,  unkindli- 
ness,  or  vindictiveness,  as  he  was  of  insincerity  or  impurity  ;  that  in  pecuniary 
straits,  even  in  despair,  he  never  wrote  a  line  that  he  did  not  believe,  never 
swerved  by  a  hair's  breadth  from  the  noble  purposes  which  dominated  his  life  and 
extinguished  all  selfish  ambition. 


The  following  letter  was  written  by  Carlyle,  in  1876,  to  a  young  man  who  had 
asked  his  advice  on  the  choice  of  a  profession  : 

"  Dear  Sir, — 1  respect  your  conscientious  scruples  in  regard  to  choosing  a  pro- 
fession, and  wish  much  I  had  the  power  of  giving  you  advice  that  would  be  of 
the  least  service.  But  that,  I  fear,  in  my  total  ignorance  of  yourself  and  the 
posture  of  your  affairs,  is  pretty  nearly  impossible.  The  profession  of  the  law  is 
in  many  respects  a  most  honorable  one,  and  has  this  to  recommend  it,  that  a  man 


VICTOR    HUGO 


161 


succeeds  there,  if  he  succeeds  at  all,  in  an  independent  and  manful  manner,  by 
force  of  his  own  talent  and  behavior,  without  needing  to  seek  patronage  from 
anybody.  As  to  ambition,  that  is,  no  doubt,  a  thing  to  be  carefully  discouraged 
in  oneself ;  but  it  does  not  necessarily  inhere  in  the  barrister's  profession  more 
than  in  many  others,  and  I  have  known  one  or  two  who,  by  quiet  fidelity  in  pro- 
moting justice,  and  by  keeping  down  litigation,  had  acquired  the  epithet  of  the 
'  honest  lawyer,'  which  appeared  to  me  altogether  human  and  beautiful. 

"  Literature,  as  a  profession,  is  what  I  would  counsel  no  faithful  man  to  be 
concerned  with,  except  when  absolutely  forced  into  it,  under  penalty,  as  it  were, 
of  death.  The  pursuit  of  culture,  too,  is  in  the  highest  degree  recommendable  to 
every  human  soul,  and  may  be  successfully  achieved  in  almost  any  honest  em- 
ployment that  has  wages  paid  for  it.  No  doubt,  too,  the  church  seems  to  offer 
facilities  in  this  respect  ;  but  I  will  by  no  means  advise  you  to  overcome  your  re- 
luctance against  seeking  refuge  there.  On  the  whole,  there  is  nothing  strikes  me 
likelier  for  one  of  your  disposition  than  the  profession  of  teacher,  which  is  rising 
into  higher  request  ever)^  day,  and  has  scope  in  it  for  the  grandest  endowments 
of  human  faculties  (could  such  hitherto  be  got  to  enter  it),  and  of  all  useful  and 
fruitful  employments  may  be  defined  as  the  usefullest,  fruitfullest,  and  also  indis- 
pensablest  in  these  days  of  ours. 

"  Regretting  much  that  I  can  help  you  so  infinitely  little,  bidding  you  take 
pious  and  patient  counsel  with  your  own  soul,  and  wishing  you  with  great  truth 
a  happy  result,  I  remain,  dear  sir,  Faithfully  yours, 

"  T.  Carlvle." 


VICTOR   HUGO 

By  Margaret  O.  W.  Oliphant 


•f,— 


■^i' 


i^P^ii^., 


THE 
Fr 


(1802-1885) 

latest     of     literary 
renchmen,  the  greatest 
man  of  genius  whom  this  cen- 
tury  has   known,    the    Altis- 
simo  Poeta,  the  most  splendid 
romancist  of  his  age,  has  ac- 
complished   his   great    career. 
He  was  the  last  survivor  of  a 
great  period  in   French  litera- 
ture— the  last  member  of  one 
of  the  greatest  literary  broth- 
erhoods  which    has    ever   ex- 
isted ;    and    he    carried    with 
him  to  the  very  i)orta]s  of  the  grave  a  lamp   of  genius  scarcely  dimmed,  and  a 
personal  power  and  influence  which  every  year  increased.     Not  very  long  ago, 
11 


162  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

all  Europe  gathered  round  him  to  offer  congratulations  on  his  hale  and  hearty 
old  ajje  ;  since  then,  with  more  than  the  hands  full  of  flowers  of  the  classic  tradi- 
tion,  with  honors  and  praises  from  every  quarter  of  the  earth,  he  has  been  carried 
to  his  grave.  The  very  sight  of  a  man  so  distinguished,  the  consciousness  of  his 
honored  existence  as  the  representative  of  the  noblest  and  most  all-embracing  of 
the  arts — that  which  depends  for  its  effects  upon  the  simplest  and  most  universal 
of  instincts — was  an  advantage  to  the  world.  The  extravagances  of  hero-worship 
are  inevitable,  and  in  nothing  is  the  ridiculous  so  tremblingly  near  to  the  sub- 
lime ;  but  allowing  for  all  that,  and  for  what  is  worse,  the  almost  equally  inevi- 
table foolishness  which  adulation  creates,  the  position  of  Victor  Hugo  was  of 
itself  an  advantage  to  the  world.  In  a  soberer  pose  altogether,  and  with  a  noble 
modesty  which  we  may  claim  as  belonging  to  our  race,  Walter  Scott  occupied  a 
somewhat  similar  position — which  would  have  been  all  the  greater  had  he  lived 
to  Hugo's  age,  an  element  which  must  necessarily  be  taken  into  consideration  ; 
but,  save  in  this  one  case,  there  has  been  no  parallel  to  the  eminence  of  the  great 
Frenchman  in  the  estimation  of  his  country  and  of  the  world. 

It  is  not  now  that  the  critic  requires  to  step  forth  to  establish  the  foundations 
of  this  great  fame,  or  decide  upon  its  reality  or  lasting  character.  This  has  been 
done  in  the  poet's  lifetime  by  a  hundred  voices,  favorable  and  otherwise  ;  no 
need  to  wait  for  death  to  give  the  final  decision,  as  in  some  cases  has  been 
necessary.  It  is  scarcely  possible  to  imagine  that,  after  so  long  a  time,  any  dis- 
covery can  be  made,  or  any  change  of  taste  occur,  which  would  interfere  with  the 
supreme  position  of  Victor  Hugo.  A  new  generation  has  been  born  in  the  faith 
which  to  their  elders  is  a  matter  of  assured  and  triumphant  conviction.  But  it 
is  a  grateful  office  to  go  over  again  some  of  the  noblest  productions  which 
human  genius  has  ever  given  forth,  and  to  contemplate  in  their  unity  the  many 
works  of  a  life  as  much  longer  than  that  of  ordinary  men  as  its  inspiration  was 
above  theirs. 

It  seems  sad  and  strange,  as  well  as  laughable  and  ludicrous,  that  the  great 
poet  should  be  regarded  by  a  vast  number  of  his  countrymen,  and  perhaps  by  the 
majority  of  the  Paris  mob  which  paid  him  the  last  honors  in  so  characteristic  a 
way,  as  a  revolutionary  politician  and  a  democratic  leader.  We  will  take  the 
privilege  of  the  foreigner  to  leave  out  that  side  of  his  life  as  much  as  may  be  prac- 
ticable. "  Napol(5on  le  Petit  "  and  the  "  Histoire  d'un  Crime  "  are  works  but  little 
worthy  of  his  genius.  Political  animosities,  sharpened  by  personal  grievances,  have 
in  many  cases  an  immense  immediate  effect  in  literature,  but  they  pay  for  this  easy 
success  by  speedy  collapse  ;  and  scarcely  even  the  magnificent  rhetoric  and  splen- 
did vituperation  of  "  Les  Chatiments  "  will  keep  them  living  when  the  world  has 
forgotten  the  lesser  Napoleon,  as  it  already  begins  to  do.  His  patriotic  fury,  the 
impassioned  utterances  of  his  exile,  the  tremendous  force  of  feeling  with  which 
he  flung  himself  into  the  struggles  of  France,  took  up  a  large  share  of  Victor 
Hugo's  fife,  and  will  procure  him  a  certain  place  in  the  historical  records  of  his 
period.  But  when  all  the  commotion  and  the  din  have  died  away,  as  indeed  in 
a  great  measure  they  have  already  done,  these  fiery  diatribes,  these  burning  lava- 


lf.2 

all  Europe  .  n  to  offer  con  his  half^  and  hearty 

uld  age  ;  sin.  .ic  tradi- 

tion, '  '*'  vciv  q  ■  a  carried 

ti'  hi  _■_  man  so  u.  -^  r,f  his 

!i  -ntative  of  the  g  of 

f  a- its  effects  upon  i  .mvcrsal 

ui  ill:  liJij  to  the  world.    The  c.\  '   |. 

arr   i  .   iiig  is  the  ridiculous  so  ti  . 

for  all  that,  and  for  what  is  worse,  tii 
which  adulation  creates,  the  position  of    Victor  li 
uage  to  the  world.     '  'icrer  pose  altogethi  :         '■  Min  a  . 

li.h  we  may  claim  as  b        ^  to  our  race,  Wall. l  occujii 

Somewhat  similar  position — which  would  have  been  all  the  greater  had  he  lived 
to  Hugo's  age,  an  element  which  must  necessarily  be  taken  into  consideration  ; 
but,  save  in  this  one  case,  then  '  '  n  no  parallel  to  the  eminence  of  the  great 
Frenchman  in  tlir  osfiin.;r;on  o  r.'rv  ind  'if  the  vrorld. 

I 
of  thi 


OOUH   aOTOIY 
^  aiiJ  Moa-? 

iiuinan  gcmas  iia^  >  ae  manv 

works  of  a  life  as  miu  a  a'n^cj    i  i  m  i  ■n.u  ,i>-  lion  was 

above  theirs. 

It  seems  sad  and  strange,  as  well  as  laughable  i^  icat 

j'  '  umber  of  his  couM' 

iii.iji'iu)  ■■  I  him  th  '  '  ■  '  ' 

way,  as  ;  a  di-m 

privilege 
ticaM 

worth_)  ui  UI-' .,   uiu  V     I 
in  ^nany  cases  an  imincii 

ss  by  speedy  collai  .1  sjilen- 

•on  of  '  )rld  ha 

^■■'■Ser   ^xa^.'....  ■'!—,   the 

■nitlcPS    nf  .  i.iich 

:  e  of  Victor 

ords  of  his 

IS  indeed  in 

■  mintr  lava- 


FT^OM   LA. 


-•-fioT-ocTAvurc   toupd  S-  L 


PRINTED  ON  THE  MKS6  PtUSB 


VICTOR    HUGO  163 

streams,  will  be  of  little  more  importance  than  the  dustiest  "  m^moires  pour  ser- 
vir  " — materials  from  which  the  historian,  with  much  smoothing  down  and  apol- 
ogies for  the  pyrotechnics  of  a  past  age,  will  take  here  and  there  a  vivid  touch  to 
illustrate  his  theories  or  brighten  his  narrative.  They  will  retain,  too,  a  certain 
importance  as  autobiography.  But  fortunately  the  great  mass  of  the  work  which 
Victor  Hugo  has  left  behind  him  can  be  separated  from  the  polemics  of  his  troub- 
led age  and  fiery  temper.  It  is  not  in  any  sense  a  peaceful  literature.  Conflict 
is  its  very  inspiration.  The  struggle  of  human  misery  with  all  the  confusing  and 
overbearing  forces  of  life  ;  of  poverty  with  the  requirements  and  oppressions  of 
wealth  ;  of  the  small  with  the  great  ;  of  the  people  with  tyrants  ;  of  Man  with 
Fate — these  are  his  subjects,  and  he  is  never  an  impartial  historian.  He  is  on 
the  side  of  the  weak  in  every  combat,  the  partisan  of  the  oppressed.  But  this 
does  not  detract  from  his  work  when  his  opponents  are  the  oppressors  of  the  past, 
or  the  still  more  subtle,  veiled,  and  unassailable  forces  of  Destiny.  The  poet's  re- 
gion is  there  :  he  is  born,  if  not  to  set  right  the  times  which  are  out  of  joint,  at 
least  to  read  to  the  world  the  high  and  often  terrible  lesson  of  the  ages.  But  it 
vulgarizes  his  work  when  he  is  seen,  tooth  and  nail,  in  violent  personal  conflict 
with  foemen  unworthy  of  his  steel,  embalming  in  poetry  the  trivial  or  the  uncom- 
pleted incidents  of  contemporary  warfare.  It  becomes  almost  ludicrous,  indeed, 
when  we  find  him  pouring  forth  page  after  page  of  vehement  and  burning  com- 
plaint in  respect  to  the  personal  sufferings  inflicted  on  himself,  when  we  know 
that  throughout  his  career  Hugo  never  knew  what  the  cold  shock  of  failure  was, 
and  that,  from  the  moment  when  Chateaubriand  adopted  him  into  the  ranks  of 
the  poets  as  U enfant  sublime,  until  the  moment  when  all  Paris  conducted  him  to 
his  last  resting-place,  no  man  has  had  a  more  enthusiastic  following,  or  accom- 
plished a  more  triumphant  career. 

Victor  Hugo  was  a  son  of  the  Revolution.  He  was  born,  as  it  were,  between 
the  two  camps,  at  a  moment  when  France  was  the  theatre  of  the  greatest  popu- 
lar struggle  in  modern  history,  of  a  mother  who  was  a  Breton  and  a  Legitimist, 
and  a  father  who  was  a  Republican  general — an  extraordinary  combination.  This 
does  not  seem,  however,  to  have  made,  as  we  might  think,  family  life  impossible, 
for  Madame  Hugo  and  her  children  followed  the  drum,  and,  notwithstanding  all 
differences  of  opinion,  found  it  possible  to  keep  together.  He  was  educated, 
it  would  appear,  under  his  mother's  influence  rather  than  that  of  the  soldier- 
father,  and  did  not,  till  his  mind  was  quite  mature,  throw  himself  into  the  revo- 
lutionary opinions  which  afterward  influenced  him  so  greatly.  A  Royalist  in  the 
Restoration  period,  an  observant  but  not  excited  spectator  of  public  affairs  from 
1830  to  1848,  it  was  not  till  the  conp  d'etat  and  the  beginning  of  the  reign  of 
the  third  Napoleon  that  he  was  seized  with  the  passion  of  political  life.  That 
great  betrayal  seems  to  have  stung  him  to  a  frenzied  resistance  and  put  poison  in 
his  veins.  His  country  was  cheated  and  betrayed  ;  the  liberty  for  which  she  had 
made  so  many  exertions,  both  heroic  and  fantastical,  taken  from  her  ;  and  his 
own  personal  liberty  and  safety  threatened.  Victor  Hugo's  soul  then  burst  into 
fell  et  fJamme.     He  caught  fire  like  a  volcano  long  silent,  a  burning  mountain 


164  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

that  had  simulated  quiet  unawares,  and  clothed  itself  with  vineyards  and  villaj^es. 
In  the  tranquil  days  when  Louis-Philippe  plotted  and  pottered,  and  France  lay 
dormant,  amusing  her  restrained  spirit  with  the  outbreak  of  the  romantic  against 
the  classical,  and  taking  pleasure  in  the  burst  of  genius  which  luul  arisen  suddenly 
and  unawares  in  her  midst,  the  poet  was  so  little  dissatisfied  with  the  bourgeois  rd- 
giinc  that  he  accepted  the  title  of  "  pair  de  France."  Montalembert  had  received 
it  some  time  before.  There  must  have  been  something  soothing,  not  inharmoni- 
ous to  the  poetical  mind,  in  the  slumbrous  reign  which  gradually  became  intol- 
erable to  the  commonalty  and  got  itself  into  contempt  with  all  the  world.  The 
young  poets  of  the  time  were  peaceful,  not  discontented.  Full  of  energy  as  they 
were,  they  took  no  part  in  the  gathering  storm.  Hugo,  a  peer,  tranquil  in  the 
superior  chamber  ;  young  De  Musset,  a  courtier  of  the  Duke  of  Orleans,  and 
hoping  for  the  king's  notice  of  his  verses.  The  eruption  was  preparing,  the  sub- 
terranean fires  alight  ;  but  the  sons  of  genius  took  no  notice.  When  the  tre- 
mendous awakening  came,  it  must,  in  the  case  of  Hugo  at  least,  have  gained 
additional  force  from  the  long  restraint.  He  was  in  the  height  of  life,  a  man  of 
forty-six,  the  leader  of  the  romantic  school,  which  by  that  time  had  overcome 
opposition  and  won  the  freedom  for  which  it  contended,  the  author  of  "  Her- 
nani "  and  the  other  great  plays  which  form  one  of  his  chief  titles  to  fame,  and 
of  volumes  of  lyrics  which  had  taken  the  very  heart  of  the  French  people,  and 
given  a  new  development  to  the  language.  And  it  was  also  during  this  peaceful 
period  that  he  had  taken  in  another  direction  a  first  step  of  unexampled  power 
and  brilliancy  in  the  romance  of  "  Notre  Dame."  Even  among  men  of  acknowl- 
edged genius,  few  have  done  so  much  in  a  lifetime  as  Victor  Hugo  had  done  up 
to  this  break  in  his  career.  We  are  so  accustomed  to  the  attitude  of  demagogue 
which  he  took  aftenvard,  to  the  violent  revolutionary,  the  furious  exile,  the  de- 
nunciatory prophet  of  the  "  Chatiments,"  that  it  is  strange  to  realize  that  his  later 
aspect  was  prefaced  by  a  long,  peaceful,  and  prosperous  beginning.  France  had 
never  seen  a  more  magnificent  band  than  that  which  surrounded  him,  and  which 
has  made  the  reign  of  the  Roi-bo7irgcois  illustrious  in  spite  of  itself ;  and  it  is  curi- 
ous to  mark  that  these  great  intelligences  did  not  object  to  their  ruler  nor  to  his 
w^ays,  but  lived  like  good  citizens,  with  but  an  occasional  fling  at  semi-sentimen- 
tal politics.  Hugo  was  the  champion  of  abstract  right  in  all  the  discussions  in 
which  he  took  part.  He  it  was  who  proposed,  among  other  things,  that  the 
Bonaparte  family  should  be  permitted  to  return  to  France.  Perhaps,  had  he 
been  less  abstract  and  logical,  and  more  moved  by  the  laws  of  expediency,  it 
might  have  been  better  both  for  France  and  for  himself. 

The  plays  which  he  produced  in  this  time  of  prosperous  calm  and  apparent 
peace  are  without  question  the  most  remarkable  dramatic  works  of  this  century, 
and  several  of  them  will,  we  have  no  doubt,  take  their  place  permanently  among 
the  few  of  all  ages  and  countries  which  the  world  will  not  willingly  let  die. 

While  these  plays  were  being  written,  and  the  mind  of  their  author  reaching 
its  full  development,  the  fountains  of  pure  poetry,  those  outbursts  of  song  which 
are  often  the  most  delightful  and  dear  of  all  the  utterances  of  the  poet,  were  flow- 


VICTOR    HUGO  165 

ing  forth,  refreshing  and  fertiHzing  French  Hterature,  and  giving  a  noble  utter- 
ance to  the  new  thought  and  rising  energy  of  the  times.  His  youth  gave  forth 
some  uncertain  notes,  his  fancy  roaming  from  Bourbon  to  Bonaparte.  But  that 
his  imagination  should  have  been  seized  by  the  recollection  of  the  great  Napo- 
leon is  so  natural,  so  inevitable,  one  would  suppose,  for  every  young  Frenchman, 
and  especially  for  the  son  of  a  Bonapartist  general,  that  there  would  have  been 
something  lacking  in  him  had  he  escaped  that  enthusiasm.  Apart  from  these 
waves  of  national  sentiment,  and  from  the  vague  music  of  the  "  Orientales  "  and 
other  such  preludes  and  symphonies,  there  is  poetry  enough  in  the  various  vol- 
umes which  followed  each  other  at  uncertain  intervals,  to  have  fully  furnished 
one  man  of  genius  with  fame  enough  for  what  we  call  immortality.  Hugo  has 
enough  and  to  spare  for  all  subjects  that  occurred  to  him.  A  sunset,  a  landscape, 
a  love  song,  alternate  in  his  pages  with  a  philosophical  discussion,  or  a  brief  and 
brilliant  scene  snatched  from  history,  from  contemporary  life,  from  his  own  inner 
existence,  all  clothed  in  the  noblest  verse  of  which  the  French  language  is  capa- 
ble. His  power  over  that  language  is  boundless,  the  wealth  of  an  utterance 
which  never  pauses  for  a  word,  which  disregards  all  rules  yet  glorifies  them, 
which  is  ready  for  every  suggestion,  and  finds  nothing  too  terrible,  nothing  too 
tender  for  the  tongue  which,  at  his  bidding,  leaps  into  blazing  eloquence,  or 
rolls  in  clouds  and  thunder,  or  murmurs  with  the  accent  of  a  dove.  Never  had 
there  been  so  great  a  gamut,  a  compass  so  extended. 

It  is  not,  however,  upon  his  poetry,  either  in  the  form  of  drama,  lyric,  or 
narrative,  that  his  fame  out  of  France,  or  at  least  in  England,  is  founded.  There 
is  no  more  usual  deliverance  of  superficial  criticism  than  that  which  declares 
French  poetry  in  general  to  be  either  nought — which  is  still  a  not  uncommon  no- 
tion— or  at  least  not  great  enough  to  be  worth  the  study  which  alone  could 
make  it  comprehensible.  There  are  many  good  people  who  dare  to  say  this,  yet 
live,  audacious,  and  unconscious  of  their  folly.  We  have,  however,  to  consider 
Victor  Hugo  on  a  ground  which  no  one  ventures  to  dispute.  The  great  ro- 
mances— for  which  we  should  like  to  invent  another  name — which  we  cannot 
call  novels,  and  which  are  too  majestic  even  for  the  title  of  romance,  though 
that  means  something  more  than  the  corresponding  word  in  English — are  in  their 
kind  and  period  the  greatest  works  produced  in  his  time. 


166 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


RALPH    WALDO   EMERSON 

Bv  MON'CURE  D.  Conway 
(1803-1882) 


o 


X  the  30th  day  of  April,  1882,  Ralph  Waldo  Emer- 
son was  "  gathered  to  his  fathers,"  at  Concord, 
Mass.  The  simple  Hebrew  phrase  was  never  more  ap- 
propriate, for  his  ancestors  had  founded  the  town  and 
been  foremost  at  every  period  of  its  remarkable  histor\'. 
More  than  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago  John  Eliot, 
who  had  gone  from  the  University  of  Cambridge,  Eng- 
land, to  be  the  "  Apostle  of  the  Indians,"  found  on  the 
banks  of  the  Musketaquid  a  settlement  of  natives,  into 
whose  language  he  translated  the  New  Testament.  In 
1634,  the  Rev.  Peter  Bulkeley,  of  Bedfordshire,  whose 
_     '     '         '  Puritan    proclivities    brought    him  under    the    ban  of 

Laud,  migrated  with  a  number  of  his  parishioners  to  New  England  ;  these  settled 
themselves  at  Musketaquid,  which  they  named  Concord.  In  the  next  year  went, 
from  County  Durham  probably,  Thomas  Emerson,  whose  son  married  a  Bulke- 
ley, and  his  grandson  Rebecca  Waldo,  descendant  of  a  family  of  the  Waldenses. 
It  was  at  Concord  that  the  soldiers  of  George  III.  first  met  with  resistance. 
Along  the  road  where  many  Englishmen  have  walked  with  Emerson  and  Haw- 
thorne, the  retreat  took  place,  and  wounded  soldiers  were  taken  into  homes  they 
had  invaded  to  learn  the  meaning  of  love  to  enemies.  Some  of  these  brave  men 
never  again  left  the  village  where  they  were  so  kindly  nursed.  Concord,  with 
its  thirteen  hundred  inhabitants,  supplied  Washington's  army  with  wood  and  hay, 
and  suffering  Boston  with  grain  and  mone}^  with  a  generosity  that  shines  in 
American  annals.  Washington's  headquarters  were  at  Craigie  Flouse,  so  long 
the  home  of  Longfellow,  and  the  Harvard  buildings  being  used  as  barracks,  the 
university  was  transferred  to  Concord. 

No  mere  literary  estimate  of  Emerson's  writings  can  adequately  report  the 
man  or  his  work.  The  value  placed  upon  him  by  Americans  appears  strangely 
exaggerated  beside  the  contemporary  English  criticism.  It  were,  indeed,  easy  to 
cite  from  European  thinkers — Carlyle,  Quinet,  John  Sterling,  Arthur  Clough, 
Tyndall,  Herman  Grimm — words  concerning  Emerson  glowing  as  those  of  Mar- 
garet Fuller,  Hawthorne,  Curtis,  Lowell,  and  other  American  authors  ;  but  if 
such  tributes  from  individual  minds  are  universally  felt  in  America  alone,  to  be 
simplest  truth  and  soberness,  it  is  because  Emerson  cannot  be  seen  detached  from 
the  cumulative  tendencies  summed  up  in  him,  and  from  the  indefinable  revolu- 
tion in  which  they  found,  and  still  find,  expression. 

The  father  of  Emerson  was  a  Unitarian  preacher  of  fine  culture,  melodious 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON  1G7 

voice,  handsome  person,  and  especially  noted  for  his  paramount  interest  in  the 
ethical  and  universal  element,  of  religion.  He  died  in  1811,  at  the  age  of  forty- 
two,  leaving  his  five  sons,  of  whom  Waldo,  then  eight  years  old,  was  the  second, 
to  the  care  of  his  young  wife,  who  had  been  Ruth  Haskins,  of  Boston.  Emer- 
son's early  growth  was  under  the  fostering  care  of  good  and  refined  women.  His 
mother  has  been  described  by  one  who  knew  her,  the  late  Dr.  Frothingham,  as 
'•  of  a  discerning  spirit,  and  a  most  courteous  bearing ;  one  who  knew  how  to 
guide  the  affairs  of  her  own  house,  as  long  as  she  was  responsible  for  that,  with 
the  sweetest  authority.  Both  her  mind  and  character  were  of  a  superior  order, 
and  they  set  their  stamp  upon  manners  of  peculiar  softness  and  natural  grace  and 
quiet  dignity."  She  was  assisted  in  bringing  up  her  family  by  her  sister-in-law, 
Mary  Emerson,  a  scholarly  woman,  well  read  in  theology  and  philosophy,  whose 
original  ideas  and  sayings  marked  her  as  "  a  character."  Another  woman  who 
exercised  a  great  influence  upon  him  was  Sarah  Bradford,  afterward  married  to 
his  relative,  Samuel  Ripley.  She  was  as  thorough  a  Greek  scholar  as  any  person 
in  America,  a  good  mathematician,  and  a  diligent  student  of  science.  Many  a 
Harvard  student  has  she  coached  in  that  Old  Manse  where  she  resided  until  her 
death  (1867),  and  where  the  writer  of  this  has  often  listened  with  admiration  to 
her  extraordinary  conversation.  At  the  same  time  nothing  could  have  exceeded 
the  practical  wisdom  and  tact  with  which  her  household  was  regulated.  "  She 
was  absolutely  without  pedantry,"  said  Emerson.  "  Nobody  ever  heard  of  her 
learning  until  a  necessity  came  for  its  use,  and  then  nothing  could  be  more  sim- 
ple than  her  solution  of  the  problem  proposed  to  her."  At  eleven  years  of  age, 
when  Emerson  was  in  the  Latin  school  at  Boston,  he  used  to  send  his  transla- 
tions, generally  poetic,  to  Sarah  Bradford  for  criticism.  The  "  Fates  "of  Michael 
Angelo,  a  large  copy  of  which  hung  in  Emerson's  study,  must  sometimes  have 
softened  to  the  faces  of  the  Ruth  and  Mary  and  Sarah,  who  spun  for  him  the 
fine  goldefn  thread  of  destiny.  Mrs.  Emerson  had  the  happiness  of  seeing  four 
of  her  sons  distinguished  for  their  ability  ;  indeed,  it  seemed  for  a  time  doubtful 
whether  William,  W'aldo,  Edward,  or  Charles  promised  the  more  brilliant  career. 
When  the  two  elder  had  graduated  at  Harvard  University,  they  taught  at  school 
in  order  to  aid  the  two  younger  in  completing  their  course  ;  but  these  two  died 
prematurely.  William  was  to  have  been  the  preacher  of  the  family,  but,  while 
pursuing  his  studies  in  Germany,  he  found  that  he  could  not  honestly  follow  his 
father's  profession — albeit  Goethe,  whom  he  knew,  sought  to  persuade  him  other- 
wise. He  afterward  became  an  eminent  lawyer.  His  mother's  disappointment 
at  this  probably  led  to  Emerson's  adoption  of  the  profession  that  his  brother  had 
declined.  He  graduated  at  eighteen,  with  a  reputation  for  classical  knowledge, 
general  literary  culture,  and  elocution.  He  had  won  the  Boylston  prize  for  "  dec- 
lamation," and  was  chosen  by  his  class  to  deliver  the  usual  poem  at  graduation. 
I  have  heard  him  say  that  it  was  then  his  ambition  to  become  a  teacher  of  elocu- 
tion, and  that  he  still  regarded  it  as  a  less  humble  aspiration  than  it  might  seem. 
Those  who  have  sat  under  the  spell  of  Emerson's  discourse  would  certainly  never 
associate  anything  commonly  called  rhetoric  with  him  ;  but  I  deri\'ed,  from  con- 


168  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

versation  with  him,  that  his  discontent  with  conventionalisms  of  thought  tiist 
took  this  form  of  dissatisfaction  with  the  conventional  oratory.  He  thought 
there  might  be  taught  an  art  of  putting  things  so  that  they  could  not  be  gainsaid. 
But  a  man  must  really  hold  that  which  he  is  to  state  successfully.  He  startled 
me  by  saying,  "  I  believe  that  a  really  eloquent  man,  though  an  atheist,  or  what- 
ever his  opinions,  would  be  listened  to  by  any  educated  congregation  in  Boston." 
No  one,  he  said,  could  discover  the  charm  of  Channing's  preaching  by  reading  his 
sermons  ;  there  was  the  heart  that  rose  up  to  meet  him  :  here  was  something  suffi- 
cient, and  the  multitude  went  off  radiant,  fed,  satisfied.  But  Emerson  was  to 
teach  the  new  art  of  eloquence  by  example. 

In  1823,  now  twenty  years  of  age,  Emerson  began  his  studies  in  theology. 
Though  often  attending  lectures  in  Harvard  Divinity  College  he  never  regularly 
entered  there,  but  still  sat  at  the  feet  of  Channing,  who  took  a  deep  personal  in- 
terest in  him.  He  was  "  approbated "  by  the  Ministers'  Association  in  1826. 
His  health  having  suffered  by  overwork  he  passed  a  winter  in  the  South,  and  in 
the  following  year  preached  several  Sundays  at  New  Bedford,  Mass.,  where  he 
found  some  friends  among  the  Quakers.  He  also  preached  for  a  time  in  Con- 
cord. In  1829  he  was  chosen  minister  of  a  large  congregation  in  Boston.  A 
venerable  minister  gave  me  an  account  of  a  sermon  he  heard  from  Emerson 
in  those  days,  impressed  on  his  memory  by  the  vitality  it  infused  in  an  old 
theme,  and  the  simplicity  with  which  it  was  delivered.  The  text  was,  "  What  is 
a  man  profited  if  he  shall  gain  the  whole  world  and  lose  his  own  soul  ? "  The 
emphasis  was  on  the  word  "  own  ;  "  and  the  general  theme  was,  that  to  every  man 
the  great  end  of  existence  was  the  preservation  and  culture  of  his  individual  mind 
and  character.  Each  man  must  be  saved  by  his  own  inward  redeemer ;  and  the 
whole  world  was  for  each  but  a  plastic  material  through  which  the  individual 
spirit  was  to  realize  itself.  Aspiration  and  thought  become  clear  and  real  only 
by  action  and  life.  If  knowledge  lead  not  to  action,  it  passes  away,  being  pre- 
served only  on  the  condition  of  being  used.  "  The  last  thing,"  said  my  inform- 
ant, "  that  any  of  us  who  heard  him  would  have  predicted  of  the  youth,  whose 
quiet  simplicity  and  piety  captivated  all,  was  that  he  would  become  the  religious 
revolutionist  of  America." 

And,  indeed,  so  softly  did  the  old  religious  forms  slip  away  from  Emerson, 
that  when  he  informed  his  congregation  that  he  could  not  longer  administer  the 
sacrament  to  them,  they  could  not  associate  any  formidable  heresy  with  his  posi- 
tion. They  were  loath  to  part  with  him.  In  the  three  years  of  his  ministry  he 
had  reflected  honor  upon  their  pulpit.  He  had  been  active  in  the  philanthropic 
work  of  Boston,  was  chaplain  of  the  Legislature,  and  on  the  School  Board.  A 
few  months  after  his  settlement  in  Boston  he  had  married  Ellen  Louisa  Tucker 
and  a  few  months  before  he  gave  up  his  pulpit  she  died.  Under  these  circum- 
stances of  depression  Emerson  came  on  his  first  visit  to  Europe.  The  record  of 
his  pilgrimage  to  Coleridge's  house  at  Highgate,  to  Rydal  Mount,  and  to  Craig- 
enputtock,  is  given  in  Emerson's  "  English  Traits."  He  came,  hoping  to  find 
light  upon  more  serious  questions  than  any  that  had  arisen  between  him  and  his 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON  169 

Boston  congregation  ;  he  returned  with  but  one  thing  made  clearer,  namely  that 
he  had  begun  an  ascent  which  each  must  climb  alone. 

The  Old  Manse  was  built  in  i  767  for  Emerson's  grandfather,  who  had  be- 
come minister  of  Concord  church.  Emerson's  father  was  the  first  child  born  in 
it,  and  used  to  claim  that  he  was  "  in  arms"  on  the  field  when  the  British  were 
repulsed,  being  six  years  old  when  the  fight  occurred  close  to  the  windows.  In 
this  house  we  now  find  Emerson,  at  the  age  of  thirty-one,  studying  Plato  and 
Plotinus,  and  the  English  mystics,  but  also,  with  Sarah  Ripley,  studying  Goethe 
and  savants  of  the  new  school,  like  Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire.  Here  was  conceived 
his  first  book,  "  Nature."  This  essay  was  published  in  1836,  the  same  year  in 
which  he  wrote  the  Concord  hymn,  since  annually  sung,  with  its  line  about  "the 
shot  heard  round  the  \vorld."  The  little  book  was  not  at  once  heard  so  far,  but 
it  proved  also  the  first  shot  of  a  revolution.  A  writer  in  the  Saturday  Rcviczu 
speaks  of  "  the  great  men  whom  America  and  England  have  jointly  lost  " — 
Emerson  and  Darwin — and  remarks  that  "  some  of  those  who  have  been  forward 
in  taking  up  and  advancing  the  impulse  given  by  Darwin,  not  only  on  the  gen- 
eral ground  wdiere  it  started,  but  as  a  source  of  energy  in  the  wider  application 
of  scientific  thought,  have  once  and  again  openly  declared  that  they  owe  not  a 
little  to  Emerson."  This  just  remark  may  be  illustrated  by  Dr.  Tyndall's  words, 
in  1873  :  "The  first  time  I  ever  knew  Waldo  Emerson  was  when,  years  ago,  I 
picked  up  at  a  stall  a  copy  of  his  '  Nature '  ;  I  read  it  with  such  delight,  and  I 
have  never  ceased  to  read  it  ;  and  if  anyone  can  be  said  to  have  given  the  im- 
pulse to  my  mind  it  is  Emerson  ;  whatever  I  have  done  the  world  owes  him." 
But  there  is  still  more  significance  in  this  matter.  In  1836,  when  Darwin  re- 
turned from  his  voyage  round  the  world,  Emerson's  "Nature"  appeared,  in 
which  the  new  world  discovered  by  the  Englishman  was  ideally  recognized  by 
the  American. 

In  1835  Emerson  was  married  to  Lidian  Jackson,  sister  of  the  late  Dr.  C.  T. 
Jackson,  well  known  in  connection  with  the  discovery  of  antesthetics.  The  Con- 
cord house  and  farm  were  now  purchased,  and  Emerson's  mother  came  to  reside 
with  him.  The  first  works  of  Emerson  brought  to  his  doors  those  strange  pil- 
grims whom  Hawthorne  has  described  in  his  "  Mosses  from  an  old  Manse." 
Lover  of  solitude  as  he  was,  the  new  teacher  had  never  the  heart  to  send  empty 
from  his  door  anyone  of  those  dejected  people  groping  for  the  light  who  sought 
him  out.  Mrs.  Emerson,  a  lady  of  refined  sensibilities  and  profoundly  religious 
nature,  must  often  have  been  severely  tried  by  these  throngs,  but  not  even  deli- 
cate health  prevented  her  from  exercising  a  large  and  beautiful  hospitality  to 
these  spiritually  lame,  halt,  and  heart-sick  who  came  to  receive  a  healing  touch. 
Though  never  ruffled,  Emerson  was  not  defenceless  before  boorish  intruders. 
On  one  occasion  a  boisterous  declaimer  against  "  the  conventionalities,"  who 
kept  on  his  hat  in  the  drawing-room  after  invitation  to  lay  it  aside,  was  told, 
"  We  will  continue  the  conversation  in  the  garden,"  and  was  genially  taken  out 
of  doors  to  enter  them  no  more.  Few  were  the  sane,  as  he  told  me,  who  visited 
him  in  those  earlier  days,  but  the  unsane  were  pretty  generally  those  whose  first 


170  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

instinct  under  an\'  new  light  is  to  get  it  into  a  tabernacle.  Fortunately  for 
Emerson  and  his  household,  some  of  his  ablest  friends  conceived  the  idea  of 
founding  a  new  society  on  his  principles  at  Brook  Farm,  near  Boston  ;  but,  un- 
fortunately for  that  community,  the  unsane  folk  flocked  to  it,  and  it  was  speedily 
brought  to  nought.  Some  able  men,  like  George  Ripley,  George  Curtis,  and 
Charles  Dana,  belonged  to  that  community  in  their  youth,  but  probably  Haw- 
thorne wrote  the  experience  of  all  of  them  when,  just  after  leaving  it,  he  entered 
in  his  note-book  (1841),  "Really  I  should  judge  it  to  be  twenty  years  since  I 
left  Brook  Farm.  ...  It  already  looks  like  a  dream  behind  me.  The  real 
Me  was  never  a  member  of  the  community  ;  there  had  been  a  spectral  appear- 
ance there,  sounding  the  liorn  at  daybreak,  and  milking  the  cows,  and  hoeing  the 
potatoes,  and  raking  hay,  toiling  in  the  sun,  and  doing  me  the  honor  to  assume 
my  name.  But  this  spectre  was  not  myself."  The  Transcendental  Club,  too, 
which  preceded  this,  and  which  met  a  few  times  at  the  house  of  Dr.  Channing 
(who  tried  to  comprehend  the  new  ideas,  and  was  always  the  friend  of  Emerson), 
failed.  The  quarterly  magazine  that  was  started,  the  Dial,  did  more.  Four  vol- 
umes of  it  appeared,  and  to  this  day  they  are  so  interesting  that  it  is  a  wonder 
they  have  not  been  reprinted  ;  but  the  serene  hours  thereon  marked  were  speedily 
succeeded  by  days  of  strife  and  storm,  in  which  the  writers  of  that  periodical 
were  summoned  to  be  leaders.  Emerson  remained  in  his  home.  He  now  and 
then  visited  Brook  Farm,  but  was  shrewd  enough  to  foresee  its  catastrophe  from 
the  first.  The  child  who  sought  her  lost  butterfly  with  tears,  not  knowing  that 
it  was  softly  perched  upon  her  head,  had  a  counterpart  in  the  many  enthusiasts, 
who  continued  to  seek  in  communities  or  new  sects  the  beauty  which  had  floated 
before  their  eyes  ;  but  some  there  were  who  made  the  happier  discovery  that  a 
quiet  New  England  village,  with  its  cultivated  families,  in  whose  Town  Hall 
Emerson  taught,  was  ideal  enough.  Gradually  Prospero  drew  around  him  the 
spirits  to  which  he  was  related,  and  Concord  became  the  intellectual  centre  of 
the  country. 

Emerson,  as  has  been  stated,  at  the  beginning  of  his  career  had  assumed  the 
truth  of  evolution  in  nature.  More  and  more  this  idea  became  fruitful  to  him. 
His  friend  Agassiz,  on  the  appearance  of  "  The  Vestiges  of  Creation,"  had  com- 
mitted himself  warmly  against  it,  but  Emerson  felt  certain  that  the  future  of 
science  belonged  to  that  principle,  which  he  had  reached  by  his  poetic  intuition. 
Nearly  thirty  years  ago,  when  I  was  a  member  of  Divinity  College,  the  theology 
taught  was  still  a  slightly  rationalistic  Unitarianism  and  the  science  qualified  by 
it  (though  Agassiz  would  not  admit  miracle).  Some  of  the  students  were  find- 
ing their  real  professor  in  Concord.  On  one  evening  we  went  out,  travelling  the 
seventeen  miles  in  sleighs,  to  hear  a  lecture  that  was  to  have  been  given  by  him ; 
it  had  been  unavoidably  postponed,  but  Emerson,  hearing  of  our  arrival,  invited 
us  to  his  house,  and  we  had  no  reason  to  feel  any  disappointment.  Nevertheless, 
Emerson  wrote  me  that  if  I  would  make  the  preparations  he  would  read  an  essay 
in  my  room.  On  that  occasion  Emerson  read  a  paper  on  "  Poetry,"  in  which  he 
stated  fully  and  clearly  the  doctrine  of  evolution.     This  was  five  years  before  the 


RALPH    WALDO   EMERSON  171 

appearance  of  the  papers  of  Darwin  and  Wallace  in  the  journal  of  the  Linnaean 
Society  (185S),  though  I  find  in  Emerson's  essay  as  published  ("  Letters  and  So- 
cial Aims,"  Chatto  &  Windus,  1876)  that  Darwin  is  mentioned;  otherwise  that 
essay  is  precisely  the  same  that  was  read  to  us  in  1853.  I  well  remember  how  we 
were  startled  that  afternoon  by  Emerson's  emphatic  declaration — "  There  is  one 
animal,  one  plant,  one  matter,  and  one  force."  He  said  also  :  "  Science  does 
not  know  its  debt  to  imagination.  Goethe  did  not  believe  that  a  great  naturalist 
could  exist  without  this  faculty.  He  was  himself  conscious  of  that  help,  which 
made  him  a  prophet  among  doctors.  From  this  vision  he  gave  grave  hints  to  the 
geologist,  the  botanist,  and  the  optician."  The  name  of  Emerson  would  now  be 
set  beside  that  of  Goethe  by  every  man  of  science  in  America.  While  as  yet 
"  The  Vestiges  of  Creation  "  was  trampled  on  by  preachers  and  professors,  Emer- 
son affirmed  its  principle  to  be  true,  and  during  some  years,  in  which  no  recog- 
nized man  of  science  ventured  to  accept  Darwin's  hypothesis,  he  sustained  its 
claim  by  references  to  the  scientific  authorities  of  Europe.  For  the  rest,  this  es- 
say, read  to  us  at  Divinity  College,  did  for  some  who  heard  it  very  much  the 
same  that  the  generalization  of  Darwin  has  done  for  vast  numbers  of  minds. 
The  harmony  of  nature  and  thought  was  in  it,  clouds  floated  into  light,  and 
though  poets  were  present,  it  appeared  the  truest  New  World  poem  that  we  were 
gathered  there  around  the  seer  in  whose  vision  the  central  identity  in  nature 
flowed  through  man's  reason,  gentlv  did  away  with  discords  through  their 
promise  of  larger  harmonies.  That  which  the  Brahmans  found  in  the  far  East, 
our  little  company  there  in  the  West  knew  also — "  From  the  poisonous  tree  of 
the  world  two  species  of  fruit  are  produced,  sweet  as  the  waters  of  life  :  Love,  or 
the  society  of  beautiful  souls,  and  Poetry,  whose  taste  is  like  the  immortal  juice 
Vishnu."  When  Emerson  had  finished  there  was  a  hush  of  silence,  the  usual  ap- 
plause of  his  listeners ;  it  seemed  hardly  broken  when  Otto  Dresel  performed 
some  "songs  without  words." 

Emerson  was  the  first  man  of  high  social  position  in  America  who  openly 
took  the  anti-slavery  position.  On  May  29,  1831,  he  admitted  an  abolitionist  to 
lecture  on  the  subject  in  his  church,  six  years  before  even  Channing  had  com- 
mitted himself  to  that  side.  Garrison  was  at  that  time  regarded  as  a  vulgar 
street-preacher  of  notions  too  wild  to  excite  more  than  a  smile.  The  despised 
group  on  Boston  Common  was  first  sheltered  by  Emerson,  and  this  action  was 
more  significant  because  Emerson  was  chaplain  of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature. 
Emerson  first  drew  the  sympathy  of  scholars  to  that  side.  The  voices  of  the  two 
popular  orators,  Channing  and  Phillips,  soon  followed,  and  Longfellow  began  to 
write  the  anti-slavery  poems  collected  in  1842.  Emerson  could  not  throw  him- 
self into  any  organization,  nor  did  he  encourage  the  scholars  around  him  to  do  so  ; 
he  believed  that  to  elevate  character,  to  raise  the  ethical  standard,  to  inspire  cour- 
age in  the  intellect  of  the  country,  would  speedily  make  its  atmosphere  too  pure 
for  a  slave  to  breathe.  Fearless  in  vindicating  those  whose  convictions  led  them 
to  enlist  for  this  particular  struggle,  Emerson  saw  in  slavery  one  among  many 
symptoms  of  the  moral  disease  of  the  time.      "The  timidity  of  our  public  opin- 


172  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

ion,"  he  said,  "is  our  disease;  or,  shall  I  say,  the  absence  of  private  opinion. 
Good  nature  is  plentiful,  but  we  want  justice  with  heart  of  steel  to  fight  down 
the  proud.  The  private  mind  has  the  access  to  the  totality  of  goodness  and 
truth,  that  it  may  be  a  balance  to  a  corrupt  society  ;  and  to  stand  for  the  private 
verdict  against  popular  clamor  is  the  office  of  the  noble.  If  a  humane  measure 
is  propounded  in  behalf  of  the  slave,  or  of  the  Irishman,  or  the  Catholic,  or  for 
the  succor  of  the  poor,  that  sentiment,  that  project,  will  have  the  homage  of  the 
hero.  That  is  his  nobility,  his  oath  of  knighthood,  to  succor  the  helpless  and 
oppressed ;  always  to  throw  himself  on  the  side  of  weakness,  of  youth,  of  hope, 
on  the  liberal,  on  the  expansive  side  ;  never  on  the  conserving,  the  timorous,  the 
lock-and-bolt  system.  More  than  our  good-will  we  may  not  be  able  to  give. 
We  have  our  own  affairs,  our  own  genius,  which  chain  us  to  our  proper  work. 
We  cannot  give  our  life  to  the  cause  of  the  debtor,  of  the  slave,  or  the  pauper,  as 
another  is  doing;  but  to  one  thing  we  are  bound,  not  to  blaspheme  the  sentiment 
and  the  work  of  that  man,  not  to  throw  stumbling-blocks  in  the  way  of  the 
abolitionist,  the  philanthropist,  as  the  organs  of  influence  and  opinion  are  swift 
to  do."  Emerson  had  as  much  practical  sagacity  as  genius  ;  when  he  spoke  these 
words  (in  a  lecture  on  "The  Young  American,"  in  Boston,  1844)  he  had 
reached  a  commanding  position,  carrying  with  it  gravest  responsibilities  ;  the  des- 
tinies of  hundreds  of  young  men  and  women  were  determined  by  his  lectures. 
But  with  reference  to  the  anti-slavery  movement,  he  did  more  than  he  exacted 
from  others,  and  recognized  it  as  a  far  more  important  reform  than  others. 
When,  in  1835,  Harriet  Martineau  was  nearly  mobbed  in  Boston,  personal  vio- 
lence being  threatened  and  no  prominent  citizen  venturing  to  her  side,  Emerson 
and  his  brother  Charles  hastened  to  her  defence.  "  At  the  time  of  the  hubbub 
against  me  in  Boston,"  she  writes  in  her  autobiography,  "  Charles  Emerson  stood 
alone  in  a  large  company  in  defence  of  the  right  of  free  thought  and  speech,  and 
declared  that  he  had  rather  see  Boston  in  ashes  than  that  I,  or  anybody  else, 
should  be  debarred  in  any  way  from  perfectly  free  speech.  His  brother  Waldo 
invited  me  to  be  his  guest  in  the  midst  of  my  unpopularity." 

In  1844,  when  Massachusetts  citizen  negroes  had  been  taken  to  prison  from 
ships  in  southern  ports,  Emerson  delivered  an  oration  on  the  anniversary  of  West 
Indian  emancipation,  and  spoke  sternly  on  the  matter.  "  If  such  a  damnable 
outrage  can  be  committed  on  the  person  of  a  citizen  with  impunity,  let  the  Gov- 
ernor break  the  broad  seal  of  the  State  ;  he  bears  the  sword  in  vain.  The  Gov- 
ernor of  Massachusetts  is  a  trifler,  the  State-House  in  Boston  is  a  play-house  ; 
the  General  Court  is  a  dishonored  body,  if  they  make  laws  which  they  cannot  exe- 
cute. The  great-hearted  Puritans  have  left  no  posterity."  He  demanded  that 
the  representatives  of  the  State  should  demand  of  Congress  the  instant  release, 
by  force  if  necessary,  of  the  imprisoned  negro  seamen,  and  their  indemnification." 
As  for  dangers  to  the  Union  from  such  demands— "the  Union  is  already  at  an 
end  when  the  first  citizen  of  Massachusetts  is  thus  outraged."  This  address  was 
a  bugle,  and  it  filled  the  anti-slavery  ranks  with  fresh  courage.  The  Herald  of 
Freedom,  reporting  it  at  the  time,  says  their  eyes  were  filled  with  tears  as  this 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON  173 

leader  of  New  England  literature  came  from  his  poetic  solitude  to  join  hands 
with  them. 

The  service  which  students  and  literary  men  could  render  in  those  days  was 
often  the  subject  of  anxious  consultation,  and  Emerson  never  failed  to  counsel 
sacrifices  for  the  public  duty. 

"  When  the  ship  is  in  a  storm,"  he  used  to  say,  "the  passengers  must  lend  a 
hand,  and  even  women  tug  at  the  ropes."  When  the  Southern  States  began  to 
secede,  some  frightened  compromisers  in  the  North  hoped  to  soothe  them  by 
silencing  the  abolitionists  ;  roughs  were  employed  to  fill  the  anti-slavery  halls  and 
drown  every  voice.  Sometimes  there  was  personal  violence.  During  the  war,  in 
which  many  of  his  friends  were  slain,  and  his  only  son  wounded,  no  man  did 
better  service  than  Emerson,  with  voice,  pen,  and  means ;  and  when  it  ended  his 
counsels  were  of  the  utmost  importance. 

Emerson  had  a  happy  old  age,  and  lived  to  see  his  golden  sheaves  around 
him.  In  the  "Address"  (1837),  now  historical,  which  brought  the  fulminations 
of  the  Unitarian  pulpit  and  university  upon  him,  in  his  thirty-fourth  year,  he  ad- 
monished the  American  scholar  that,  "  if  the  single  man  plant  himself  indomit- 
ably on  his  instincts,  and  there  abide,  the  huge  world  will  come  round  to  him." 
And  now  America  has,  in  his  own  history,  the  impressive  confirmation  of  his 
faith.  In  just  twenty-nine  years  from  the  time  that  sentence  was  uttered,  the 
university  which  repudiated  him  made  him  an  over-.eer  and  a  doctor  of  laws,  and 
a  lecturer  to  the  students,  and  he  was  the  most  universally  beloved  and  honored 
man  in  America.  Where  he  singly  opened  his  church  to  abolitionists,  he  lived 
to  see  all  churches  anti-slavery  and  the  slave  set  free.  The  white-robed  sage  lay 
in  the  church  founded  by  his  Puritan  ancestors,  enlarged  by  his  own  thought, 
above  whose  pulpit  was  a  harp  made  of  golden  flowers,  and  on  it  an  open  book 
made  of  pinks,  pansies,  roses,  with  the  word  "  Finis."  Flowers  were  never  more 
truly  symbolical.  His  efifective  weapons  against  error  and  wrong  were  like  those 
roses  with  which  the  angels,  in  Goethe's  "  Faust,"  drove  away  the  demons,  and 
his  sceptre  was  made  known  by  blossoming  in  his  hand. 


The  following  extract  from  a  letter  written  by  Emerson  to  one  of  his  chil- 
dren, is  reprinted  from  Cabot's  "  A  Memoir  of  R.  W.  Emerson,"  by  permission 
of  the  publisher,  G.  W.  Dillingham. 

"  You  are  bound  to  be  healthy  and  happy.  I  expect  so  much  of  you,  of 
course,  and  neither  allow  for  nor  believe  any  rumors  to  the  contrary.  Please 
not  to  give  the  least  countenance  to  any  hobgoblin  of  the  sick  sort,  but  live  out- 
of-doors,  and  in  the  sea-bath  and  the  sail-boat,  and  the  saddle,  and  the  wagon,  and, 
best  of  all,  in  your  shoes,  so  soon  as  they  will  obey  you  for  a  mile.  For  the 
great  mother  Nature  will  not  quite  tell  her  secret  to  the  coach  or  the  steamboat, 
but  says,  '  One  to  one,  my  dear,  is  my  rule  also,  and  I  keep  my  enchantments  and 
oracles  for  the  religious  soul  coming  alone,  or  as  good  as  alone,  in  true  love.'  " 


174 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


HENRY   WADSWORTH   LONGFELLOW* 


By  Hezekiah  Butterworth 


(1807-1882) 


T' 


^11  AT  was  a  memorable  scene  in  the  Poet's 
Corner  of  Westminster  Abbey,  when  the 
veil  was  lifted  from  the  bust  of  Henry  Wads- 
worth  Longfellow,  the  first  American  upon 
whom  England  had  conferred  such  distin- 
guished honor.  James  Russell  Lowell  was 
there,  and  made  the  eulogy,  and  left  in  all 
minds  the  impression  of  these  simple  words  : 
"  The  most  beautiful  character  that  I  have 
ever  known."  Mr.  Lowell  knew  men,  and 
among  the  great  spirits  of  the  age  with  whom 
he  had  been  associated,  he  perhaps  had  known 
no  literary  man  more  intimately  than  Long- 
fellow. The  original  families  of  Lowell  and 
Longfellow  in  America  had  grown  side  by 
side  on  the  banks  of  the  Merrimac.  The 
younger  poet  had  succeeded  the  elder  in  the 
professorship  of  literature  at  Harvard  College ;  the  two  had  lived  side  by  side  in 
historic  houses  in  the  old  Cambridge  neighborhood  on  the  Charles,  and  there  had 
shared  the  amenities  of  suburban  life  and  had  studied  the  world  together.  It  was 
said  that  Longfellow  came  to  live  in  a  house  "  on  the  way  to  Mt.  Auburn  ; "  Low- 
ell lived  in  a  house  on  the  same  road,  and  the  two  poets  sleep  together  there  now 
in  the  loving  shadows  of  Boston's  "  Field  of  God." 

Since  the  days  of  Horace,  friendship  has  found   no   more   sympathetic  and 
beautiful  expression  in  verse  than  in  the  lines  inscribed  by  Lowell  to  Longfellow 
and  in  the  poems  written  by  Longfellow  in  reference  to  Lowell. 
Says  Lowell  in  his  lines  to  H.  W.  L : 

"  Long  days  be  his,  and  each  as  lusty-sweet 

As  gracious  natures  find  his  song  to  be  ; 
May  age  steal  on  with  softly-cadenced  feet 
Falling  in  music,  as  for  him  were  meet 

Whose  choicest  verse  is  harsher-toned  than  he  !  " 

Says  Longfellow  of  Lowell  in  the  "  Herons  of  Elmwood  :" 

"  Sing  to  him,  say  to  him,  here  at  his  gate, 

Where  the  boughs  of  the  stately  elms  are  meeting, 
Some  one  hath  lingered  to  meditate. 

And  send  him  unseen  this  friendly  greeting  ; 

*  Copyright.  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess 


HENRY    WADSWORTH    LONGFELLOW  175 

"  That  many  another  hath  done  the  same, 

Though  not  by  a  sound  was  the  silence  broken  ; 
The  surest  pledge  of  a  deathless  name 

Is  the  silent  homage  of  thoughts  unspoken." 

The  matchless  lines  in  "The  Two  Angels,"  a  poem  that  commemorates  the 
events  of  the  birth  of  a  child  to  Longfellow  and  the  death  of  the  beautiful  wife 
of  Lowell  on  the  same  night,  in  which  the  poet  sees  an  angel  with  amaranths 
go  to  the  door  of  his  neighbor,  while  an  angel  with  asphodels  comes  to  his  own 
door,  strikes  the  tenderest  chords  of  life. 

Longfellow  was  the  poet  of  friendship,  and  he  carried  his  heart  friends  wher- 
ever he  went.  The  river  Charles  in  his  fancy  made  the  letter  C  in  its  windino-s 
in  the  Brighton  meadows  before  his  door,  and  ever  recalled  three  friends  who 
had  borne  that  name.  One  of  the  masterpieces  of  the  work  of  his  fading  years 
is  "Three  Friends  of  Mine,"  in  which  he  pictures  Felton  and  Agassiz  and  the 
midnight  parting  with  Charles  Sumner  at  his  door,  and  represents  himself  as  one 
left  to  cover  up  the  embers. 

Henry  W.  Longfellow,  the  poet  of  "  Hope,  Home,  and  Histor}^"  was  a  de- 
scendant of  the  famil}^  of  William  Longfellow,  who  came  from  England  to  New- 
bury, Mass.,  in  1675,  and  a  son  of  Stephen  Longfellow,  an  eminent  lawyer  and 
public  man.  He  was  born  in  Portland,  Me.,  February  27,  1807.  The  family  con- 
sisted of  eight  children,  of  which  he  was  the  second,  and  of  which  two  were  poets, 
the  other  being  the  Unitarian  hymn  writer,  Rev.  Samuel  Longfellow. 

He  grew  up  a  pure,  loving  boy  in  the  schools  of  Portland,  Me.,  fond  of  the 
woods,  the  hills,  and  the  sea.  "  My  Lost  Youth  "  furnishes  a  delightful  picture 
of  this  period  of  his  life.  It  is  said  that  his  childhood  fancy  first  found  expression 
in  the  following  rhymes  : 

"  Mr.  Finney  had  a  turnip 
That  grew  behind  the  barn, 
And  it  grew  and  it  grew, 
But  never  did  any  Jianii." 

A  member  of  the  Longfellow  family  has  denied  that  these  luminous  but  not 
very  promising  lines  were  the  first  offering  of  his  muse.  If  the  anecdote  be 
apocryphal,  the  boy  Longfellow  yet  began  to  love  poetry  and  to  write  it,  and  he 
became  a  newspaper  poet,  one  of  those  common  soldiers  of  literature,  while  a 
student.  He  read  Irving  at  twelve,  and  was  charmed  with  the  matter  and  style 
of  "  Rip  Van  Winkle."  He  felt  the  charm  of  Horace  a  little  later,  and  probably 
learned  his  first  lesson  in  eloquent  literature  from  the  "  Poetic  Art  "  of  the  Augus- 
tine age  of  Rome  in  her  glory.  Says  Horace  :  "  He  who  writes  what  is  use- 
ful with  what  is  agreeable  wins  every  vote  :  his  book  crosses  the  sea ;  it  will 
enrich  the  booksellers,  and  win  for  him  imperishable  fame." 

Longfellow  learned  to  make  what  is  nscftil,  agreeable,  and  this  principle  was 
one  of  the  great  secrets  of  his  success  in  literary  life.  His  early  poems  that  did 
useful  and  agreeable  service  in  the  poet's  corner  of  the  newspapers  of  the  time 
were,  so  far  as  we  know,   never  collected.     A  few  of  them,  however,  survive, 


176  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

among  them  "The  Spirit  of  Poetry,"  "Sunrise  on  the  Hills,"  and  "The   Hymn 
of  the  Moravian  Nuns." 

At  the  age  of  fourteen  he  was  prepared  for  Bowdoin  College,  which  he 
entered  a  year  later  as  a  sophomore,  and  became  a  member  of  one  of  the  most 
distinguished  classes  in  American  history.  Among  his  fellow-students  were  Na- 
thaniel Hawthorne,  his  personal  friend,  John  S.  C.  Abbott,  George  B.  Cheever, 
William  Pitt  Fcssenden,  John  P.  Hale,  Calvin  E.  Stone,  and  Franklin  Pierce, 
afterward  President  of  the  United  States.  He  was  graduated  the  fourth  in  his 
class. 

The  ambition  for  authorship  came  to  him  among  the  shades  of  Bowdoin.  He 
said  while  there,  thus  anticipating  in  prose  the  "  Psalm  of  Life  :"  "  Whatever  I 
study  I  ought  to  engage  in  with  all  my  soul,  for  I  zoill  be  eminent  in  something." 

His  poems  published  in  the  newspapers,  principally  in  the  Boston  Literary 
Gazette,  during  his  college  life  made  for  him  a  name,  and  he  was  offered  the  pro- 
fessorship of  modern  languages  in  Bowdoin  College,  soon  after  his  graduation. 
To  better  prepare  himself  for  the  chair  he  went  abroad,  in  1826,  in  his  twentieth 
year.  He  studied  in  France,  Spain,  Italy,  and  Germany.  He  made  himself 
master  of  the  French,  Spanish,  German,  and  Italian  languages  and  literature,  and 
returned  to  America  in  the  late  summer  of  1829,  and  entered  upon  the  duties  of 
his  professorship  at  Bowdoin  in  the  autumn.  He  married  Miss  Mary  Potter, 
of  Portland,  Me.,  and  went  to  live  in  an  old  house,  which  was  shaded  by  a 
single  great  elm,  the  site  of  which  is  still  shown,  on  a  salary  of  $1,000  per  year. 
He  published  "  Outre  Mer,"  and  taught  and  wrote  with  such  distinguished  suc- 
cess that,  on  the  resignation  of  George  Ticknor,  he  was  offered  the  chair  of  modern 
languages  at  Harvard.  For  the  .arger  preparation  which  he  found  necessary  for 
his  work,  he  went  to  Europe  again  in  1S35.  In  his  first  visit  to  Europe  he  had 
met  Washington  Irving  in  Spain  ;  he  now  made  the  acquaintance  of  Carlyle  and 
Browning.      His  wife  died  in  Germany. 

He  became  a  professor  in  Harvard  in  the  fall  of  1836,  making  his  residence 
at  the  Cragie  House,  an  old  colonial  mansion,  shaded  by  trees,  which  Washing- 
ton had  used  for  his  headquarters  in  1 775-1 776.  He  married  a  most  beautiful 
and  accomplished  lady,  a  daughter  of  Hon.  Nathan  Appleton,  of  Boston,  whom 
he  had  met  abroad,  and  who  is  supposed  to  be  described  in  his  romance  "  Hype- 
rion." Here,  happy  in  his  domestic  life,  surrounded  by  the  most  scholarly  men 
of  America,  his  literary  life  ripened,  his  fame  as  a  poet  grew,  and  his  sympathy 
with  life  as  expressed  in  his  works  won  all  hearts.  His  "Voices  of  the  Night" 
made  him  the  poet  of  the  home  ;  "  Evangeline,"  which  is  the  American  book  of 
Ruth,  made  him  the  singer  of  the  fidelity  of  holy  affections,  and  "  Hiawatha," 
the  voice  of  the  dying  traditions  of  the  Indian  race. 

He  was  a  lover  of  his  family,  and  a  great  affliction  came  to  him  in  the  sum- 
mer of  1 86 1.  One  July  day  his  wife  was  playing  with  some  sealing-wax  with  her 
children,  when  her  dress  caught  fire,  and  she  was  enveloped  in  the  flames,  and 
burned  to  death.  The  poet  is  said  to  have  suddenly  changed  from  a  young  man 
to  an  old  man  under  his  weight  of  grief ;  he  appeared  in  the  streets  of  Cam- 


HENRY    WADSWORTH    LONGFELLOW  177 

bridgfe  aafain,  in  a  few  weeks,  but  unlike  his  former  self.  His  affection  for  his 
dead  wife  in  his  widowerhood  is  expressed  in  the  "  Cross  of  Snow,"  written  many 
years  after  her  death  : 

"  In  the  long,  sleepless  watches  of  the  night, 
A  gentle  face — the  face  of  one  long  dead — 
Looks  at  me  from  the  wall,  where  round  its  head 
The  night  lamp  casts  a  halo  of  pale  light. 
Here  in  this  room  she  died  ;  and  soul  more  white 
Never  through  martyrdom  of  fire  was  led 
To  its  repose  ;  nor  can  in  books  be  read 
The  legend  of  a  life  more  benedight. 
There  is  a  mountain  in  the  distant  West 
That,  sun-defying,  in  its  deep  ravines 
Displays  a  cross  of  snow  upon  its  side. 
Such  is  the  cross  I  wear  upon  my  breast 

These  eighteen  years,  through  all  the  changing  scenes 
And  seasons,  changeless  since  the  day  she  died." 

He  would  take  a  dear  friend  into  the  room  where  her  portrait  hung,  point  to 
it,  and  say  "  my  dear  wife,"  and  turn  away  to  weep.  His  loving  dream  of  his  first 
wife  is  pictured  in  "The  Footsteps  of  Angels  :  " 

"  And  with  them  the  Being  Beauteous, 
Who  unto  my  youth  was  given, 
More  than  all  things  else  to  love  me, 
And  is  now  a  saint  in  heaven. 

"  With  a  slow  and  noiseless  footstep 
Comes  that  messenger  divine. 
Takes  the  vacant  chair  beside  me. 
Lays  her  gentle  hand  in  mine. 

"  And  she  sits  and  gazes  at  me 

With  those  deep  and  tender  eyes. 
Like  the  stars,  so  still  and  saint-like, 
Looking  downward  from  the  skies. 

"  Uttered  not,  yet  comprehended. 
Is  the  spirit's  voiceless  prayer. 
Soft  rebukes,  in  blessings  ended. 
Breathing  from  her  lips  of  air. 

"  Oh,  though  oft  depressed  and  lonely, 
All  my  feafs  are  laid  aside, 
If  I  but  remember  only 

Such  as  these  have  lived  and  died  !  " 

In  1868  he  went  to  England  with  his  family.  His  fame  in  England  was  as 
great  now  as  that  of  any  English  poet.  He  was  received  in  London  with  the 
greatest  love  and  hospitality ;  he  met  the  queen,  and  received  a  doctor's  degree 
from  the  Universities  of  Oxford  and  Cambridge.  His  reception  by  the  literary 
classes  was  not  more  warm  than  the  appreciative  interest  which  was  shown  by  the 

12 


178  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

people.  He  had  become  the  poet  of  the  English  homes,  and  was  as  greatly  read 
as  the  Laureate. 

I  met  the  poet  under  most  pleasant  circumstances,  in  the  beginning  of  his 
beautiful  old  age.  I  was  a  young  editor ;  I  was  called  to  make  an  address  be- 
fore a  church  literary  society  on  the  historic  places  of  Boston,  and  I  wrote  to 
Professor  Longfellow  in  regard  to  the  history  of  the  poem  "I  Stood  on  the 
Bridge  at  Midnight."  I  received  a  note  from  him  in  his  well-known  hand,  say- 
ing that  if  I  would  visit  him  some  evening  at  his  home,  it  would  give  him  pleas- 
ure not  only  to  give  me  the  history  of  the  writing  of  this  poem,  but  of  any  of 
his  poems  in  which  I  might  take  an  interest.  I  accepted  the  invitation,  and  one 
misty  February  night  found  me  at  his  door,  feeling  as  poor  Phillis  Wheatly  must 
have  felt  when  she  stood  at  the  same  door  after  the  invitation  from  Washington. 

I  well  recall  the  night.  The  slow  opening  of  the  door  by  the  quiet  servant, 
the  dim  hall  that  seemed  haunted  by  the  shadows  of  the  past,  the  great  reception- 
room  walled  with  books  and  pictures  ! 

The  poet  tvas  alone — he  was  a  lonely  man  in  his  old  age.  He  rose  from  his 
table,  and  came  to  meet  me,  a  kindly  light  in  his  face,  his  flowing  hair  as  white 
as  snow.  He  saw  that  I  was  awed  by  his  presence,  and  his  gracious  dignity 
changed  at  once  into  a  friendly  sympathy.  "  I  have  here  some  things  that  may 
interest  you,"  he  said  ;  "  here  is  Coleridge's  inkstand  ;  there  is  Tom  Moore's 
waste-paper  basket  ;  and  there,"  he  added,  in  a  reverent  tone,  "  is  a  piece  of 
Dante's  coffin."  The  last  relic  was  enclosed  in  a  solid  glass,  and  he  proceeded 
to  tell  the  story  of  how  he  had  received  it. 

"  You  express  a  kindly  interest  in  the  origin  of  my  poems,"  he  added,  in  sub- 
stance. "  I  will  tell  you  something  about  the  writing  of  some  of  them.  You 
see  the  screen  yonder ;  it  is  Japanese  ;  there  is  written  upon  it  the  '  Psalm  of 
Life.'  The  poem  was  written  at  Cambridge  when  the  orchards  were  bright  with 
buds  and  blossoms,  and  the  days  were  in  the  full  tide  of  the  year.  I  did  not 
write  it  for  publication  but  for  myself.  I  felt  an  inspiration  to  express  in  words 
my  one  purpose  in  life,  I  carried  it  about  with  me  for  a  long  time,  when  I  was 
asked  for  a  poem  for  the  Knickerbocker  Magazine,  then  a  popular  periodical,  and 
I  sent  it  to  the  editor  without  any  expectation  of  its  success  with  the  people.  It 
has  been  translated  into  nearly  all  languages  that  have  a  literature. 

"  In  London  I  received  an  invitation  to  visit  the  queen.  On  returning  from 
the  palace,  the  coach  was  stopped  by  the  crowd  of  vehicles  in  the  street.  There 
stepped  before  the  door  of  the  carriage  an  English  workman.  '  Are  you  Mr. 
Longfellow  ? '  he  asked.  '  I  am,'  I  answered.  '  Did  3^ou  write  the  "  Psalm  of 
Life  "  ? '  'I  wrote  that  poem,  my  friend.'  '  Pardon  me,  but  would  you  be  will- 
ing to  take  the  hand  of  a  ivorkinginan  ? '  '  Certainly,  my  friend  ;  it  would  give 
me  pleasure.'  He  put  his  hand  through  the  carriage  window,  and  I  shook  hands 
with  him.  That,"  said  Mr.  Longfellow,  with  emphasis  and  feeling,  "was  the  best 
compliment  that  I  ever  received  in  my  life." 

The  last  declaration,  in  which  we  think  that  we  have  quoted  the  poet's  exact 
words,  shows  the  heart  and  character  of  the  man.      It  is  a  photograph  of  his  soul. 


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HENRY    WADSWORTH    LONGFELLOW  179 

He  said  that  the  poem  "  I  Stood  on  the  Bridge  at  Midnight "  was  written  in 
the  lonely  hours  of  his  widowerhood,  when  he  used  to  visit  Boston  evenings  and 
return  over  the  bridge  of  the  Charles.  The  bridge  grew  still  as  the  night  wore  on, 
and  the  procession  of  the  day  became  thin.  There  was  a  furnace  at  Brighton  at 
that  time,  and  the  reflection  of  the  red  fire  fell  across  the  dark  river.  The  bridge 
over  the  Charles  is  nearly  the  same  now  as  then  ;  it  has  been  somewhat  recon- 
structed, but  the  wooden  piers  are  there  ;  the  drifting  seaweed,  the  odor  of  the 
brine,  and  the  processions  of  "  care-encumbered  men  "  vanishing  into  the  night. 
An  English  nobleman  who  is  a  literary  critic  has  pronounced  this  poem  the  most 
sympathetic  in  the  language.  Its  popularity  probably  is  due  to  the  night  scene 
and  the  spirit  of  self-renunciation.  It  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  songs  of  the 
age  as  set  to  music  by  two  English  composers.  We  never  tire  of  the  message 
of  sympathy. 

*  "  Excelsior,"  which  has  been  greatly  parodied,  expresses  in  a  simple  way 
what  Browning  has  more  artistically  illustrated  in  "  Childe  Roland  to  the  Dark 
Tower  Came."  It  was  written  one  evening  after  the  poet  had  received  a  letter 
from  his  beloved  friend,  Charles  Sumner,  full  of  lofty  sentiments,  expressed  in 
the  classic  rhetoric  of  the  time.  As  he  dropped  the  letter  the  word  "  Excelsior  " 
caught  his  eye,  and  the  inspiration  and  the  vision  of  the  poem  came.  He  wrote 
it  on  the  back  of  the  letter  which  contained  the  magic  word. 

It  is  said  that  the  words  "  Cumnor  Hall,"  in  Meckle's  ballad,  so  haunted  the 
mind  of  Sir  Walter  Scott  as  to  compel  him  to  write  "  Kenilworth."  "I  was 
led,  I  think,"  said  Longfellow,  "  to  write  the  '  Wreck  of  the  Hesperus  '  by  the 
words  '  Norman's  Woe.'  I  had  been  reading  one  dreary  night  of  the  disasters 
that  had  befallen  the  Gloucester  fishing  fleet,  and  my  eye  met  the  words  '  Nor- 
man's Woe.'  I  went  to  bed,  but  the  story  haunted  me.  I  arose  and  began  to 
write,  and  the  poem  came  to  me  in  whole  stanzas." 

"The  Old  Clock  on  the  Stairs  "  was  suggested  by  an  old  farmhouse  timepiece 
at  the  country  house  of  Mr.  Appleton,  his  father-in-law.  While  the  house  de- 
scribed was  in  the  country,  the  description  answers  well  to  the  poet's  own  resi- 
dence, which  also  contained  an  eight-day  clock  which  reached  from  floor  to  ceil- 
ing. Many  people  never  so  much  as  doubted  that  the  Cragie  House  and  its 
clock  were  meant  in  the  poem.  The  clock  in  the  Cambridge  house  was  so  old 
and  antique  that  most  visitors  fancied  that  they  saw  in  it  the  real  "  old  clock  on 
the  stairs."  The  refrain  was  suggested  by  the  French  words  "Toujours  jamais, 
jamais  toujours  "  in  an  elegant  French  quotation. 

"  Hiawatha"  was  pictured  to  the  poet  by  the  story  which  Abraham  le  Fort, 
an  Onondaga  chief,  gave  to  Schoolcraft.  The  musical  vocabulary  in  which  the 
Indian  words  suggest  their  own  meaning  may  be  found  in  Schoolcraft.  It  is  the 
one  poem  which  commemorates  the  legends  of  the  Indian  races  ;  it  will  doubt- 
less outlive  those  races,  and  be  their  tradition  in  future  ages.  The  Indian  words, 
as  in  the  instance  of  "  Norman's  Woe,"  must  have  suggested  in  many  cases  the 
scenes  and  incidents  of  the  poet's  creative  fancy. 

"The  March  of  Miles  Standish,"  which  followed,  repeats  the  old  apocryphal 


180  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

Puritan  story,  which  no  one  but  a  critic  would  care  to  question.  We  think, 
however,  that  the  ancient  fable  of  Europa  is  likely  to  have  suggested  the  ride  to 
Duxbury  on  the  back  of  the  bull,  for  at  that  time  there  were  few  cattle  in  the 
colonies. 

"  '  The  Tales  of  a  Wayside  Inn,'  "  said  Mr.  Longfellow,  "  received  that  name 
merely  to  give  them  locality.  I  had  never  been  in  the  Wayside  Inn,  but  once." 
(We  think  that  he  stopped  there  on  his  first  return  from  Europe  when  travelling 
from  Albany  to  Boston,  on  which  road  there  were  the  White  Horse,  Red  Horse 
(Wayside),  and  Black  Horse  Inns.)  "  I  had  written  the  stories  in  verse,  and  I 
wished  to  connect  them  with  a  sympathetic  place  and  a  company  of  story-tellers. 
My  friends  were  accustomed  to  dine  occasionally  at  the  Wayside  Inn,  and  it 
seemed  a  pleasing  fancy  to  place  my  story-tellers  there."  The  Poet  of  the  com- 
pany was  Mr.  Parsons,  the  Dante  scholar ;  the  Theologian,  Mr.  Wales  ;  the  Si- 
cilian, Luigi  Monte,  an  exile  from  Sicily,  whom  President  Lincoln  sent  back 
in  an  official  capacity,  under  the  influence  of  Charles  Sumner,  when  Sicily  be- 
came free  during  the  Italian  revolution  ;  the  Jew  was  Edrika,  an  accomplished 
Boston  merchant. 

"  Paul  Revere's  Ride"  is  perhaps  the  most  popular,  and  the  "  Vision  Beauti- 
ful "  the  most  philosophical,  of  these  many  tales.  The  story  of  "  Lady  Went- 
worth  "  is  a  most  charming  story  of  old  New  England  folk-lore,  and  wears  the 
quaint  and  sympathetic  colorings  of  colonial  times. 

"  I  have  given  up  the  theory,"  said  Mr.  Longfellow,  "  that  the  old  stone 
tower  at  Newport  is  to  be  connected  with  the  Norsemen.  I  feel  certain  now 
that  it  is  merely  a  windmill.  I  have  a  model  of  just  such  a  mill,  which  was  a 
common  sight  on  the  coasts  of  the  North  Sea."  His  residence  in  Scandinavia 
as  a  student  gave  him  a  love  of  the  literature  of  the  North,  and  hence  his  tales 
from  the  Sagas. 

The  melodious  and  sympathetic  qualities  of  Longfellow's  verse  meet  well  the 
wants  of  the  composer.  The  songs  of  the  poet  are  more  and  more  being  wedded 
to  music.  "The  Bridge,"  "The  Rainy  Day,"  "The  Day  is  Done,"  "The  Legend 
of  the  Crossbill,"  "The  Silent  Land,"  "Allah,"  "The  Sea  Hath  its  Pearls" 
(translation),  and  many  other  poems  have  found  expression  in  musical  art  as 
inspired  and  beautiful  as  themselves,  and  thus  winged  will  long  go  singing 
through  the  world.  The  English  composers  have  thus  far  been  the  best  inter- 
preters of  his  songs. 

His  view  of  literature  at  that  time,  when  he  had  made  his  fame  and  stood  in 
the  ripeness  of  the  harvest,  was  expressed  in  the  words  of  Fitz  Greene  Halleck, 
which  he  quoted  :  "A  little  well  written  is  immortality."  He  had  always  acted 
on  Horace's  advice  as  given  in  the  "  Poetic  Art,"  and  had  chosen  subjects  that 
waited  a  voice,  and  made  what  was  useful,  agreeable.  Every  poem,  even  though 
an  inspiration,  had  been  carefully  revised,  until  the  best  and  most  sympathetic, 
picturesque,  and  worthy  expression  was  found.  His  poems  grew  in  art  with 
years.  One  of  his  earliest  volumes  was  "  Outre  Mer,"  which  was  followed  by 
"  Hyperion  "  after  some  years  ;  both  prose  works  were  filled  with  the  spirit  of 


HENRY    WADSWORTH    LONGFELLOW  181 

poetry.  In  1839  he  published  his  first  popular  volume  of  verse  under  the  title  of 
"  Voices  of  the  Night  ;  "  in  1841,  "  Ballads  and  other  Poems  ;  "  in  1842,  "  Poems 
on  Slavery;"  in  1843,  "The  Spanish  Student;"  in  1846,  "The  Belfry  of 
Bruges;"  and  in  1847,  "Evangeline,"  which  established  his  fame.  His  other 
works  were  published  after  intervals  of  two  or  three  years,  with  a  long  silence 
after  the  death  of  his  wife  in  1861.  The  last  of  his  great  poems  was  "  Morituri 
Salutamis,"  read  by  him  at  the  fiftieth  reunion  of  his  class  at  Bowdoin  College. 
One  of  his  most  perfect  poems,  and  perhaps  the  most  elegant  of  its  kind  in  any 
language,  was  produced  at  this  period  of  the  beginning  of  life's  winter,  "  Three 
Friends  of  Mine." 

One  March  day  in  1882,  a  lad  from  one  of  the  Boston  schools  came  to  me, 
and  said  that  some  pupils  from  the  school  wished  to  call  on  the  poet,  and  asked 
me  if  I  supposed  that  he  would  receive  them  and  give  them  his  autograph.  1 
recalled  that  Longfellow  had  said  to  me  that  he  always  answered  applications  for 
autographs,  adding,  "  Would  it  not  be  discourteous  in  me  to  refuse  my  name  to 
one  who  took  such  an  interest  in  anything  which  I  had  written  as  to  write  me 
for  such  a  favor  ? "  I  replied  that  I  had  no  doubt  but  that  the  poet  would  re- 
ceive them  kindly  ;  that  he  loved  young  people,  and  advised  them  to  make  the 
call. 

He  received  the  lads  with  his  usual  kindness,  showed  them  the  historic  asso- 
ciations of  the  old  house,  and  then  in  their  company  looked  over  on  the  Brighton 
meadows  and  the  Charles  River  with  its  now  icy  C,  for  the  last  time.  The  day 
was  declining,  the  last  March  day  that  he  would  ever  see  in  health.  Illness  came 
soon  after  this  visit  from  the  school-boys,  and  soon  he  who  had  lived  on  the 
way  to  Mt.  Auburn,  was  borne  to  the  calm  city  of  the  dead.  His  grave  is  near 
Spurzheim's,  not  far  from  the  gate,  on  a  beautiful  knoll,  and  is  marked  by  a  sim- 
ple stone  with  a  plain  inscription. 

Longfellow  was  the  poet  of  humanity  and  eternal  hope,  and  his  poetic  script- 
ures are  always  sought  and  always  will  be  by  spirits  seeking  sympathy.  He 
doubtless  \\\\\  live  as  the  poet  of  the  heart  long  after  greater  rhetoricians  and 
more  philosophical  poets  have  lost  their  influence.  It  is  the  poet  that  is  most 
human  that  has  the  greatest  influence  and  the  most  enduring  fame. 

As  the  poet  of  eternal  hope,  his  horizons  ever  lift.  He  could  not  have  writ- 
ten Browning's  "  Lost  Leader."  His  characters  are  all  happy  in  the  end  ;  his 
ships  of  song  all  come  to  blue  harbors  and  happy  ports.  Poems  like  Lowell's 
"  Rhoecus,"  where  opportunity  is  lost  forever,  find  no  expression  in  his  muse, 
but  rather  the  rainbow  always  that  shines  in  the  "  Legend  Beautiful."  His  Sor- 
dellos  do  not  fail  ;  they  attain  ;  the  people  of  his  fancy  overcome  even  their  sins 
and  mount  on  them  like  ladders  to  heaven.  Even  old  age  in  his  view  is  full  of 
opportunity,  and  all  experiences  have  their  kindly  helps  and  opportunities. 
Though  a  translator  of  Dante,  his  own  muse  had  no  "  Inferno,"  but  only  a  "  Pur- 
gatorio." 

He  is  the  most  loved  poet  of  our  own  or  of  any  age ;  the  American  Horace, 
whose  pictures  of  all  that  is  best  in  our  early  history  will  ever  remain.     To  study 


182 


ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 


him  is  to  grow.  He  never  gave  to  the  world  a  soiled  thought,  or  planted  a  seed 
in  any  mind  whose  flower  and  fruit  were  not  good.  "The  most  beautiful  char- 
acter I  ever  knew,"  said  Lowell  amid  the  shadows  of  the  royal  tombs  of  the  Ab- 
bey, as  his  white  bust  was  placed  among  the  ghosts ;  and  so  felt  those  who  laid 
him  down  to  rest  in  the  kindly  earth  of  Mt.  Auburn's  fields  and  flowers,  on  the 
banks  of  the  calm,  rippling  Charles ;  and  so  feel  those  who  visit  that  simple  spot, 
and  rest  in  thought  there  amid  the  vines  and  roses  under  the  trees. 

He  touched  all  life  to  make  it   better,  and  humanity  will  ever  be  grateful  to 
the  Heavens  that  he  lived  and  sang. 


/f'^/^W  /f^a^u^/^ 


ALFRED  TENNYSON* 


By  Clarence  Cook 


(l 809-1 892) 


F' 


'EW  of  the  world's  great  poets  have  woven  into 
their  verse  so  much  autobiographical  ma- 
terial as  the  late  Lord  Tennyson,  Poet  Laureate 
of  England.  All  his  early  poetry  is  suffused 
with  tints,  sombre  or  bright,  and  breathes  of 
sounds  that  recall  the  landscape  of  the  Lincoln- 
shire in  whose  sunniest  spot  he  was  born,  but  in 
near  neighborhood  to  "  the  level  waste,  the  round- 
ing gray  "  of  "  the  dark  fen,"  and  within  sight 
and  sound  of  the  "sandy  tracts"  and  "the  ocean 
roaring  into  cataracts."  Later,  we  find  in  some 
of  the  poems  that  have  made  for  themselves  a 
place  in  the  heart  of  all  English-speaking  people, 
vivid  pictures,  in  words  or  phrases,  recalling  his 
travels  in  Italy  and  Greece  ;  and  in  the  latter 
half  of  his  life  we  follow  him  to  the  southern 
part  of  England,  to  Surrey  and  the  Isle  of  Wight, 
where  we  find  him  in  his  "  careless-ordered  garden,  close  to  the  edge  of  a  noble 
down,"  or  "  hear  the  magpie  gossip  garrulous  under  a  roof  of  pine."  But,  to 
quote  the  lines  that  illustrate  this  autobiographic  element  in  Tennyson's  poetry, 
or  that  show  his  happy  way  of  making  use  of  his  actual  experiences,  by  which 
again  we  are  able  to  get  an  impression  of  his  way  of  life,  and  of  the  manner  of 
man  he  was,  would  be  to  transfer  a  goodly  portion  of  his  verse  to  these  pages. 
Alfred  Tennyson  was  born  August  5,   1809,  at  Somersby,   Lincolnshire,  and 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


ALFRED   TENNYSON  183 

was  the  third  son  in  a  family  of  five  sons  and  seven  daughters  born  to  the  Rev- 
erend George  Clayton  Tennyson,  who  was  rector  of  Somersby,  and  held,  besides, 
the  livings  of  Beg-Enderby  and  Great  Grimsby. 

Tennyson's  father  was  a  man  of  various  tastes  and  accomplishments,  dabbling 
in  poetry,  painting,  architecture,  music,  the  study  of  language  and  mathematics, 
but  doing  nothing  of  note  in  any  of  these  things.  Even  as  a  preacher  he  seems 
to  have  made  but  little  impression,  if  we  may  judge  by  the  answer  made  by  one 
of  his  old  parishioners  to  the  question  :  "  What  sort  of  sermons  did  Mr,"  Tenny- 
son preach  ?"  "  Eee  read  urn  from  a  paaper,  an  I  didn't  knaliw  what  um  meant." 
But  the  father's  versatility  doubtless  did  his  children  good  service  ;  for  in  such  a 
village  as  Somersby,  the  opportunities  for  general  culture  were  few.  Up  to  the 
age  of  seven,  when  he  was  sent  to  the  grammar-school  at  Louth,  Alfred  was 
taught  at  home  by  his  father.  We  are  told  that  in  the  case  of  each  of  his  boys, 
Mr.  Tennyson  was  in  the  habit,  before  presenting  them  at  the  grammar-school, 
of  making  them  commit  to  memory  and  recite  every  day  one  of  the  Odes  of 
Horace,  beginning  with  the  Ode  to  Maecenas  and  ending  with  the  "  In  Praise  of 
Augustus" — the  last  Ode  of  the  four  Books.  Alfred  went  to  Louth,  entering 
the  grammar-school  the  Christmas  after  the  battle  of  Waterloo.  His  brother 
Charles  was  already  there,  and  the  whole  family  moved  to  Louth  from  Somersby 
in  order  to  make  a  home  for  the  boys.  In  1820,  at  the  age  of  eleven,  Alfred 
left  the  school,  and  returned  with  his  family  to  tbe  parsonage  at  Somersby.  In 
1828  he  went  to  Cambridge,  and  the  years  that  elapsed  between  his  leaving  the 
grammar-school  and  his  entering  the  university  were  among  the  most  important 
in  the  youth  of  the  poet.  His  further  instruction  in  preparation  for  college  was 
carried  on  at  home  ;  but  on  the  whole  the  teaching  was  desultory  ;  although, 
judging  from  the  results,  what  was  done  in  the  way  of  direct  instruction  was 
done  "thoroughly.  As  Mr.  Graham  tells  us,  there  was  not  a  clever  man  in 
the  county  who  was  not  asked  to  give  his  assistance  in  the  task.  One  tutor 
drilled  Alfred  in  mathematics  ;  another  in  music ;  and  a  Roman  Catholic  priest 
taught  him  and  his  brother  linguistics  with  a  view  to  the  university ;  and 
Alfred  was  allowed  to  spend  much  time  in  wandering  about  the  moors,  or 
in  the  woods  that  covered  the  hills  on  whose  skirts  the  village  of  Somersby 
stood.  Carlyle  writes  to  Emerson  :  "  You  see  in  Tennyson's  verse  that  he  is  a 
native  of  moated  grange  and  green  flat  pastures,  not  of  mountains  and  their  tor- 
rents," and  this  is  true  in  part ;  but  Mr.  Graham  tells  us  that  the  country  about 
Somersby  is  not  flat,  but  broken  and  hilly,  and  that  the  place  is  named  Som- 
ersby, i.e.,  summer's  town,  because  it  abounds  in  birds  and  flowers  ;  and,  indeed, 
one  may  know  by  the  frequent  allusions  to  flowers  and  birds,  and  the  nice  obser- 
vation shown  in  these  allusions,  that  these  things  must  have  made  a  strong  impres- 
sion on  the  youthful  mind  of  the  poet.  He  learned  nature  at  first  hand,  and 
had  his  lesson  by  heart,  unconsciously  imbibing  it  from  his  walks  alone,  or  with 
his  dearly  loved  elder  brother,  Charles — elder  by  five  years — over  all  the  country- 
side ;  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  wild  and  dreary  side  of  that  region,  the  flat 
expanse  of  the  fens  slowly  rescuing  from  the  ever  threatening  and  invading  sea, 


184  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

the  long  line  of  the  coast  with  its  beaches  and  ridgrd  mounds  of  sand  built  by  the 
winds,  and  strengthened  by  the  bird-sown  seeds  of  grass  to  be  barriers  against  the 
ocean — that  all  these  scenes  made  an  impression  on  his  mind  strong  to  balance 
the  sweet  woodland  pastoral  note  of  the  Somersby  brooks  and  Howery  hollows,  no 
one  can  doubt  who  knows  Tennyson's  poetry.  He  had  little  love  for  the  hardier 
sports  of  boys,  but  was  not  a  retiring  child  either,  nor  over-contemplative,  al- 
though he  was  described  by  one  of  the  old  Northern  Farmers  he  has  immortalized, 
as  a  boy' who  would  "  sit  for  hours  on  a  gate  gawmin  about  him  !  "  But  this  in- 
dolence was  a  trait  that  he  had  in  common  with  many  men  destined  to  greatness, 
and  it  clung  to  him  all  his  life.  It  was  no  sign  of  an  indolent  mind,  but  rather, 
evidence  of,  perhaps,  an  over-active  one.  His  earliest  volume  of  poems — made 
up  of  his  own  with  contributions  from  his  brothers,  Charles  and  Frederick,  and 
published  when  he  was  eighteen — though  written  all  along  the  track  of  the  pre- 
ceding years,  bears  evidence  of  much  youthful  wrestling  with  the  problems  of 
life,  mingled  with  much  that  witnesses  to  the  boy's  pure  joy  in  living.  He  be- 
gan to  write  poetry  at  a  very  early  age,  and  he  found  in  his  family  an  audience 
by  no  means  at  one  in  their  appreciation  of  his  talent.  After  hearing  some  of 
his  verses,  his  grandfather  gave  him  a  half-guinea,  and  prophesied  that  it  would 
prove  the  first  and  the  last  of  his  earnings  by  that  trade.  Whether  or  not  the  old 
gentleman  lived  to  hear  of  his  getting  a  whole  guinea  a  line  for  some  of  his  work, 
as  we  think  we  remember  to  have  heard  was  the  case  with  "  Sea  Dreams,"  we  do 
not  know  ;  but,  with  his  probable  taste  in  poetry,  supposing  him  to  have  cared  for 
the  poetry  of  his  time,  he  would  doubtless  have  looked  upon  Alfred's  success  as 
another  sign  of  the  degeneracy  of  the  age.  As  has  been  hinted,  Mr.  Tennyson  was 
very  careful  of  his  money,  and  his  boys  were  not  allowed  much  spending-money. 
Alfred  and  his  brother  Charles  had  the  natural  youthful  desire  to  see  their  poetry 
in  print,  but  they  could  not  with  all  their  savings  raise  the  money  to  meet  the 
expense  of  publication.  An  old  nurse  of  the  family,  the  wife  of  the  coachman, 
is  authority  for  the  statement  that  it  was  her  husband  who  first  showed  the  boys 
away  out  of  the  difficulty.  "  Why  don't  you  make  a  book  of  some  of  these  poems 
you  are  all  the  time  writing,  and  sell  it  to  a  publisher  ?  "  Acting  on  this  hint  the 
boys  offered  their  small  collection  to  a  publisher,  who  doubtless  thinking  that 
two  families  so  well-placed  in  the  county  as  the  Tennysons  and  the  Fytches 
would  insure  the  success  of  their  young  offshoots'  venture,  assumed  the  expense 
of  printing,  and  gave  the  budding  poets  ten  pounds  to  boot.  The  "  Poems  by 
two  Brothers"  appeared  in  1827.  The  news  of  its  publication  was  greeted  bv 
one  of  the  uncles  with  the  remark  :  "  I  hear  that  my  nephew  has  made  a  book. 
I  wish  it  had  been  a  wheelbarrow  ! "  The  thin  volume  has  long  ago  passed  into 
the  domain  of  "books  not  to  be  had,"  and  when  by  any  chance  a  copy  is  brought 
to  light  the  price  it  brings  in  the  open  market  would  have  taken  the  uncle's 
breath  away.  The  book  has  lately  been  reprinted,  and  in  this  form  is  now  access- 
ible. 

At  Cambridge,  Tennyson  entered  Trinity  College,  and  while  there  made  the 
acquaintance  of  Arthur  Henry  Hallam,  which  soon  ripened  into  the  friendship 


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ALFRED   TENNYSON  185 

that  has  been  made  immortal  in  the  poem  "  In  Memoriam."  The  only  distinction 
Tennyson  would  seem  to  have  gained  at  Cambridge  was  the  Chancellor's  gold 
medal  awarded  for  the  prize-poem  "  Timbuctoo,"  a  curious  production  long  con- 
signed to  oblivion  but  now  included  in  the  authorized  edition  of  the  poet's  col- 
lected work. 

In  iSii  the  Rev.  Mr.  Tennyson  died,  and  on  leavnng  Cambridge,  Alfred  re- 
turned to  Somersby  and  lived  with  his  mother  and  sisters.  In  1830  he  published 
"  Poems  chiefly  Lyrical,"  in  1832  "  Poems,"  and  in  1842  "Poems,"  in  two  vol- 
umes, which  first  opened  the  eyes  of  the  English  public  to  the  fact  that  a  new 
planet  had  appeared  in  the  heaven  of  poetry,  and  Tennyson's  name  soon  became 
a  household  word.  In  1845  he  was  awarded  a  pension  of  ;^2oo  per  annum  from 
the  Civil  List,  and  in  1850  he  was  made  Poet  Laureate,  on  the  death  of  Words- 
worth. In  the  same  year  he  married  Miss  Emily  Sellwood,  whom  he  had  long 
known  at  Somersby,  the  daughter  of  a  lawyer,  and  niece  of  Sir  John  Franklin. 
In  1855  he  received  the  honorary  degree  of  Doctor  of  Civil  Law  from  Oxford  and 
in  1884,  being  then  in  his  seventy-fifth  year,  he  was  raised  to  the  peerage  under 
the  title  of  Baron  Tennyson  of  Aldworth  and  Farringford. 

Tennyson  was  an  ardent  lover  of  England,  and  seldom  left  his  native  coun- 
try, and  never  for  any  long  time.  He  had  two  residences,  one  at  Freshwater,  in 
the  Isle  of  Wight,  and  the  other  at  Aldworth  on  the  top  of  Blackdown,  in  Sur- 
rey. He  changed  from  one  of  these  places  to  the  other  according  to  the  sea- 
sons and  led  in  both  the  same  quiet  family  life,  devoted  to  poetry,  and  enjoying 
to  the  full  the  delights  of  the  country,  caring  little  for  other  society  than  that  of 
his  intimate  friends — a  strong  contrast  in  this  respect  to  his  great  contemporary 
Browning,  who  delighted  in  the  social  life  of  London,  as  that  life  delighted  in 
him.  Mr.  Edwin  Arnold  has  given  in  a  recent  number  of  The  Forum  (1891)  a 
very  pleasant  account  of  a  day  spent  at  Farringford  in  the  company  of  the  ven- 
erable poet  and  his  only  surviving  son  Hallam,  named  after  the  friend  of  his 
father's  early  years.  Although  Tennyson  was  averse  to  mingling  in  general 
society,  and  was  difficult  of  access  in  his  home,  except  to  his  intimate  friends, 
yet  those  friends  were  among  the  elect  spirits  of  England,  and  he  has  recorded 
his  feeling  for  some  of  them — for  Maurice,  Fitzgerald,  Spedding,  Lear,  among 
others — in  poems  that  deserve  a  place  among  his  best.  His  friendship  for  Car- 
lyle  grew  out  of  his  admiration  for  the  genius  of  the  man  as  well  as  his  character, 
and  Carlyle  has  left  more  than  one  sketch  of  his  friend  among  his  inimitable 
word-portraits  of  notable  men. 

The  interest  of  Tennyson's  life  really  centres  in  his  early  days  spent  in  his 
father's  parish  of  Somersby  ;  his  later  life  has  flowed  on  in  a  stream  rarely  inter- 
rupted by  any  events  with  which  the  public  was  concerned,  or  that  can  be  said  to 
have  greatly  influenced  his  poetry.  He  was  no  doubt  the  product  of  his  time, 
and  took  a  deep  interest  in  what  was  going  on  in  the  world,  especially  in  so 
much  of  it  as  affected  England.  But  his  strong  conservatism  made  him  unsym- 
pathetic with  much  that  is  called  progress,  and  which  at  any  rate  is  change ;  and 
change  of  any  sort  was  little  welcome  to  Tennyson.     He  was  not  born  to  be  a 


186  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

reformer,  and  was  ill-fitted  by  his  temper  to  lead  public  opinion.  But  his  lofty 
moral  character,  the  noble  purity  and  elevation  of  his  life,  and  his  singleness  of 
aim,  joined  with  his  extraordinary  powers  as  a  poet,  as  a  wielder  of  the  English 
language — and  no  poet  since  the  great  days  has  had  such  a  varied  power  over  all 
chords  of  the  lyre — these  elements  combined  to  make  the  name  of  Tennyson 
without  a  doubt  the  greatest  of  his  time  among  the  poets  of  the  English-speak- 
ing race.     He  died  at  Aldworth  House,  in  Surrey,  October  6,  1892. 


<:::^^V^ 


tr 


CHARLES    DICKENS 

By   Walter  Besant 
(1812-1870) 


C 


HARLES  Dickens  was  born  at 
Landport,  now  a  great  town,  but 
then  a  little  suburb  of  Portsmouth, 
or  Portsea,  lying  half  a  mile  outside 
of  the  town  walls.  The  date  of  his 
birth  was  Friday,  February  7,  181 2. 
His  father  was  John  Dickens,  a  clerk 
in  the  navy  pay-office,  and  at  that 
time  attached  to  the  Portsmouth 
dockyard.  The  familiarity  which 
the  novelist  shows  with  sea-ports 
and  sailors  is  not,  however,  due  to 
his  birthplace,  because  his  father,  in 
■■^''  the  year  1814,  was  recalled  to  Lon- 

"^'■-  don,  and  in  1816  went  to  Chatham. 

They    still    show  the    room    in    the 

dockyard  where  the    elder  Dickens 

worked,    and    where    his    son    often 

came  to  visit  him.     The  family  lived 

in  Ordnance  Place,  Chatham,  and  the 

boy  was  sent  to  a  school  kept  in  Gibraltar  Place,  New  Road,  by  one  William 

Giles.     As  a  child  he  is  said  to  have  been  a  great  reader,  and  very  early  began  to 

attempt  original  writing.     In    182 1,  Charles  being  then   nine  years  of  age,  the 

family  fell  into  trouble  ;  reforms  in  the  Admiralty  deprived  the  father  of  his  post, 

and  the  greater  part  of  his  income.     They  had  to  leave  Chatham  and  removed  to 


CHARLES    DICKENS  187 

London,  where  a  mean  house  in  a  shabby  street  of  Camden  Town  received  them. 
But  not  for  long.  The  unfortunate  father  was  presently  arrested  for  debt  and  con- 
signed to  the  Marshalsea,  and  Charles,  then  only  ten  years  of  age,  and  small  for  his 
age,  was  placed  in  a  blacking-factory  at  Hungerford  Market,  where  all  he  could  do 
was  to  put  the  labels  on  the  blacking-bottles,  with  half  a  dozen  rough  and  rude 
boys.  The  degradation  and  misery  of  this  occupation  sunk  deep  into  the  boy's 
soul.  ?Ie  could  never  dare  to  speak  of  this  time  ;  it  was  never  mentioned  in  his 
presence.  Not  only  were  his  days  passed  in  this  wretched  work,  but  the  child 
was  left  entirely  to  himself  at  night,  when  he  made  his  way  home  from  Hunger- 
ford  Market  to  Camden  Town,  a  distance  of  four  miles,  to  his  lonely  bedroom. 
On  Sundays  he  visited  his  father  in  the  prison.  Of  course  such  a  neglected  way 
of  living  could  not  continue.  They  presently  found  a  lodging  for  him  in  Lant 
Street,  close  to  the  Marshalsea,  where  at  least  he  was  near  his  parents,  and  his 
father  shortly  afterward  recovering  his  liberty,  they  all  went  back  to  Camden 
Town,  and  the  boy  was  sent  to  school  again.  It  was  to  a  private  school  in  the 
Hampstead  Road,  where  he  remained  for  three  or  four  years  of  quiet  work.  It 
must  have  been  then,  one  suspects,  rather  than  at  Chatham,  that  he  became  so 
great  a  devourer  of  books.  But  he  was  never  a  scholar  in  any  sense,  and  the 
books  that  he  read  were  novels  and  plays.  That  the  family  fortunes  were  still 
low  is  proved  by  the  fact  that,  when  he  was  taken  from  school,  no  better  place 
could  be  found  for  him  than  a  stool  at  the  desk  of  a  solicitor.  Meantime  his 
father  had  obtained  a  post  as  reporter  for  the  Morning  Herald,  and  Charles,  feel- 
ing small  love  for  the  hopeless  drudgery  of  a  lawyer's  office,  resolved  also  to  at- 
tempt the  profession  of  journalist.  He  taught  himself  shorthand  with  the  resolu- 
tion— even  the  rage — which  he  always  threw  into  everything  he  undertook  ;  and 
he  frequented  the  British  Museum  daily  in  order  to  supplement  some  of  the 
shortcomings  of  his  reading.  In  his  seventeenth  year  he  became  a  reporter  at 
Doctors'  Commons.  At  this  period  all  his  ambitions  were  for  the  stage.  He 
would  be  an  actor.  All  his  life,  indeed,  he  loved  acting  and  the  theatre  above 
all  things.  As  an  actor,  one  feels  certain  that  he  would  have  succeeded.  He 
would  have  made  an  excellent  comedian.  Fortunately,  he  was  saved  for  better 
work. 

It  was  not  until  he  was  two-and-twenty  that  he  succeeded  in  getting  perma- 
nent employment  on  the  staff  of  a  London  paper,  as  a  reporter.  In  this  capaci- 
ty he  was  sent  about  the  country  to  do  work  which  is  now  mainly  supplied  by 
local  reporters.  It  must  be  remembered  that  there  were  as  yet  no  railways. 
He  had  to  travel  by  stage-coach,  by  post,  by  any  means  that  offered.  "  I  have 
been  upset,"  he  said  years  afterward,  speaking  of  this  time,  "  in  almost  every  de- 
scription of  vehicle  used  in  this  country." 

About  this  time  he  began  the  real  work  of  his  life.  In  December,  1833,  the 
Monthly  Magazine  published  his  first  original  paper,  called  "A  Dinner  at  Poplar 
Walk."  Other  papers  followed,  but  produced  nothing  for  the  contributor  ex- 
cept the  gratification  of  seeing  them  in  print,  because  the  magazine  could  not 
afford  to  pay  for   anything.      However,  they  did  the  writer  the    best  service 


188  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

possible,  in  enabling  him  to  prove  his  power,  and  he  presently  made  an  arrange- 
ment with  the  editor  of  the  Evening  Chronicle  to  contribute  papers  and  sketches 
regularly,  continuing  to  act  as  reporter  for  the  Morjiing  Chronicle,  and  getting 
his  salary  increased  from  five  guineas  to  seven  guineas  a  week.  To  be  making 
an  income  of  nearly  four  hundred  pounds  a  year  at  the  age  of  two  or  three  and 
twenty,  would  be  considered  fortunate  in  any  line  of  life.  Sixty  years  ago,  such 
an  income  represented  a  much  more  solid  success  than  would  now  be  the  case. 
The  sketches  were  collected  and  published  in  the  beginning  of  the  year  1836,  the 
author  receiving  a  hundred  and  fifty  pounds  for  the  copyright.  He  afterward 
bought  it  back  for  eleven  times  that  amount.  In  the  last  week  of  March  in  the 
same  year  appeared  the  first  number  of  the  "  Pickwick  Papers ;  "  three  days  af- 
terward Dickens  married  the  daughter  of  his  friend,  George  Hogarth,  editor  of 
the  Evening  Chronicle,  and  his  early  struggles  were  finished. 

No  article,  however  short,  treating  of  Charles  Dickens,  can  avoid  entering 
into  the  details  of  his  early  history  with  a  fulness  which  would  be  out  of  all  pro- 
portion to  what  follows,  but  for  the  remarkable  fact  that  the  events  of  his  child- 
hood and  his  youth  impressed  his  imagination  and  influenced  the  whole  of  his  lit- 
erary career  so  profoundly,  that  to  the  very  end  of  his  life  there  is  not  a  single 
work  in  which  sorne  of  the  characters,  some  of  the  places,  are  not  derived  from 
his  early  recollections.  Many  other  writers  there  are  who  have  passed  their 
childish  days  among  the  petites  gens,  but  none  who  have  so  remembered  their 
ways,  their  speech,  and  their  mode  of  thought.  The  Marshalsea  prison  of  Little 
Dorrit  is  the  place  where  for  two  years  he  went  in  and  out.  The  Queen's  Bench 
and  its  Rules  were  close  to  the  Marshalsea  ;  Bob  Sawyer's  lodgings  in  Lant 
Street  were  his  own  ;  David  Copperfield,  the  friendless  lad  in  the  dingy  ware- 
house, was  himself ;  the  cathedral  of  Edwin  Drood  was  that  in  whose  shadow 
he  had  lived  ;  Mrs.  Pipehin  is  his  old  landlady  of  Camden  Town  ;  the  most  de- 
lightful features  in  Mr.  Micawber  are  borrowed  from  his  own  father  ;  the  expe- 
riences of  Doctors'  Commons,  the  solicitor's  clerks,  the  life  in  chambers,  are  all  his 
own  ;  while  of  individual  characters,  the  list  of  those  which  are  known  to  be  por- 
traits more  or  less  true  to  nature  might  be  indefinitely  extended.  And  yet, 
while  he  was  early  drawing  on  these  early  recollections,  while  they  constantly 
furnished  him  with  scenes  and  characters,  he  could  not  bear  to  speak  of  them, 
and  no  one  except  his  friend  and  biographer,  Forster,  ever  knew  that  he  was 
himself,  with  all  the  shabby,  mean  surroundings  in  early  life,  exactly  such  as  Da- 
vid Copperfield. 

The  rest  of  Dickens's  life  has  the  interest  which  belongs  to  success  after  suc- 
cess. It  was  a  long,  triumphal  march.  He  had  no  failures  ;  he  suffered  no  de- 
feats. There  were  times  when  his  hand  was  not  at  his  best,  but  never  a  time 
when  his  hand  lost  its  power.  This  indeed  seems  the  crowning  happiness  of  a 
successful  and  singularly  happy  life,  that  when  he  was  cut  off — he  died  June  6, 
1870 — after  fifty-eight  years  of  continuous  work,  his  brain  was  still  as  vigorous, 
his  eye  as  keen,  his  hand  as  sure  as  in  the  first  fresh  running  of  his  youth.  It 
was  indeed  more  than  literary  success  which   he   achieved  ;  he   conquered   the 


CHARLES    DICKENS  189 

whole  English-speaking  world.  This  world,  which  now  numbers  nigh  upon  a 
hundred  millions,  loves  him  ;  all  who  can  read  his  books  love  him.  This  love 
cheered  him  in  his  life,  and  will  keep  his  memory  green.  Of  the  solid  wealth 
which  he  acquired,  the  honor  he  enjoyed,  the  friends  who  gathered  round  him, 
and  the  brave  and  resolute  front  which  he  always  showed,  there  is  no  space  here 
to  speak. 

The  following  is  the  list  of  Dickens'  works,  in  their  order  of  appearance, 
omitting  certain  farces  and  pamphlets  which  belong  to  a  more  extended  notice : 

"Sketches  by  Boz "  (1836),  "The  Posthumous  Papers  of  the  Pickwick 
Club"  (1837),  "  Oliver  Twist "  (1838).  "Nicholas  Nickleby"  (1839),  "The  Old 
Curiosity  Shop"  (1840-41),  "  Barnaby  Rudge "  (1841),  "American  Notes" 
(1842),  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit  "  (1843),  "  The  Christmas  Tales" — viz.,  "  The  Christ- 
mas Carol,"  "  The  Chimes,"  "  The  Cricket  on  the  Hearth,"  "The  Battle  of  Life," 
"The  Haunted  Man,"  and  "The  Ghost's  Bargain  "—(1843,  1846,  1848),  "Pict- 
ures from  Italv  "  (1845),  "  Dombey  and  Son"  (1846-48),  "David  Copperfield  " 
(1849-50),  "Bleak  House"  (1852-53),  "The  Child's  History  of  England" 
(1854),  "Hard  Times"  (1854),  "Little  Dorrit "  (1855-57),  "A  Tale  of  Two 
Cities"  (1859),  "The  Uncommercial  Traveller"  (1861),  the  "Christmas  Num- 
bers "  in  Hojisehold  Words  and  All  the  Year  Round,  "  Great  Expectations " 
(1860-61),  "Our  Mutual  Friend"  (1864-65),  "The  Mystery  of  Edwin  Drood" 
(unfinished).  This  long  roll  by  no  means  represents  the  whole  work  of  this 
most  active  of  mankind.  Public  readings  both  in  this  country  and  in  America, 
private  theatricals,  speeches,  letters  innumerable,  journeys  many,  pamphlets,  plays, 
the  conduct  of  a  popular  magazine — first  called  Household  Words,  and  then 
All  the  Year  Round — and  an  ever-present  readiness  to  enjoy  the  society  of 
his  friends,  fill  up  the  space  when  he  was  not  actually  writing.  That  he  could  do 
so  much  was  mainly  due  to  his  orderly  and  methodical  habits,  to  his  clearness 
of  mind,  and  to  a  capacity  for  business  as  wonderful  as  his  genius  for  fiction. 
He  knew  no  rest  from  the  day  when  he  first  attacked  shorthand,  to  the  day  when 
he  fell  from  his  chair  in  the  fit  from  which  he  never  recovered.  He  was  incom- 
parably the  most  active  man,  the  hardest-working  man  of  his  age.  In  the  history 
of  letters  there  are  many  who  have  produced  more  work  in  bulk  ;  there  is  not 
one  who  led  a  life  so  varied,  so  full,  so  constantly  busy,  so  active,  and  so  rich. 

It  is  as  yet  too  early  to  speak  with  certainty  as  to  the  lasting  popularity  of 
his  work  as  a  whole.  Very  much  of  it  owed  its  general  success  to  the  faithful 
delineation  of  manners  already  passed  away.  He  was  the  prophet  of  the  middle 
class,  and  the  manners  of  that  great  section  of  the  community  have  greatly 
changed  since  the  days  when  Charles  Dickens  lived  among  them  and  observed 
them.  With  the  decay  of  these  manners  some  part  of  present  popularity  must 
certainly  pass  out  of  his  work  ;  already  a  generation  has  appeared  to  whom  a 
great  deal  of  Dickens'  work  proves  of  no  interest,  because  it  portrays  manners 
with  which  they  are  not  familiar.  They  do  not  laugh  with  those  who  laughed 
fifty,  forty,  twenty  years  ago,  because  the  people  depicted  have  vanished.  But 
when  the  second  quarter  of  this  century  shall  belong  so  truly  to  the  past,  that 


190  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

not  one  survives  who  can  remember  it,  then  these  books  will  become  a  precious 
storehouse  for  the  study  and  the  recovery  of  part,  and  that  a  large  part,  of  its 
life  and  manners. 

Again,  it  is  the  essential  quality  of  genius  to  create  the  type.  In  this  Dickens 
has  been  more  successful  than  any  other  novelist,  ancient  or  modern.  With  him 
every  leading  character  stands  for  his  class.  Squeers  is  the  representativ^e  of  the 
school-master,  then  too  common,  ignorant,  brutal,  and  grasping ;  Winkle  is  the 
Cockney  sportsman  ;  it  is  impossible  to  think  of  red  tape  without  naming  Mr. 
Tite  Barnacle  ;  and  so  on  through  all  the  books.  If  he  sometimes  too  plainly 
labels  his  characters  with  their  qualities  and  defects,  it  is  a  fault  caused  by  his  own 
clearness  of  conception  and  of  execution.  It  is  another  note  of  genius  to  suffer 
every  character  to  work  out  its  own  fate  without  weakness  or  pity,  and  though 
Dickens  deals  seldom  with  the  greater  tragedies  of  the  world  in  his  domestic 
dramas,  necessity  pursues  his  characters  as  grimly  and  certainly  as  in  real  life. 
The  villain  Quilp  and  his  tool  make  us  forget,  in  the  amusement  which  they 
cause,  their  own  baseness.  But  their  creator  is  not  deceived.  He  makes  them 
bring  their  own  ruin  upon  their  heads.  To  be  true,  not  only  to  the  outward 
presentment  and  speech  and  thought  of  a  character,  but  also  to  the  laws  which 
surround  him,  and  to  the  consequences  of  his  actions,  is  a  rare  thing  indeed  with 
those  who  practise  the  art  of  fiction.  Further,  in  this  art  there  are  permissible 
certain  exaggerations,  as  upon  the  stage.  There  is  exaggeration  of  feature,  ex- 
aggeration of  talk,  exaggeration  in  action.  There  are  degrees  of  exaggeration, 
by  which  one  passes  through  tragedy,  comedy,  farce,  and  burlesque  ;  but  in  all 
there  must  be  an  exaggeration.  Dickens  was  master  of  exaggeration — if  he 
sometimes  carried  it  too  far,  he  produced  farce,  but  never  burlesque.  As  for 
selection,  which  is  perhaps  the  most  important  point  after  exaggeration,  it  came 
to  him  by  instinct ;  he  knew  from  the  very  outset  how  to  select.  It  is  by  selec- 
tion that  the  novelist  maintains  the  interest  of  his  story  and  develops  his  char- 
acters. There  are  countless  things  that  are  said  and  done  in  the  progress  of  the 
history  which  have  little  interest  and  small  bearing  on  the  things  which  have  to 
be  told  ;  and  it  is  the  first  mark  of  the  bad  novelist  that  he  does  not  know  how 
to  suppress  irrelevant  scenes.  In  the  constructive  branch  of  his  art  Dickens 
continually  advanced.  His  earlier  stories  seem,  like  the  "  Pickwick  Papers,"  to 
be  made  up  of  scenes.  "  Nicholas  Nickleby  "  is  a  long  series  of  scenes  brilliantly 
drawn,  in  which  new  characters  are  always  appearing  and  playing  their  discon- 
nected part  and  disappearing.  But  as  he  grew  older  his  conceptions  of  the  story 
itself  grew  clearer,  and  his  arrangement  more  artistic.  It  is,  however,  in  descrip- 
tion that  Dickens  proved  himself  so  great  a  master.  He  laid  his  hand  by  in- 
stinct upon  the  salient  and  characteristic  features,  and  he  never  failed  in  finding 
the  right — the  only — words  fit  for  their  illustration.  In  description  he  is  never 
conventional,  always  real,  and  yet  he  allows  himself,  here  as  in  his  scenes  of 
character  and  dialogue,  a  certain  exaggeration  which  produces  the  happiest 
effects.      In  the  hands  of  his  imitators  it  becomes  grotesque  and  intolerable. 

As  to  his  great  and  splendid  gallery  of  portraits,  it  is  difficult  to  speak  briefly. 


ROBERT    BROWNING 


191 


The  whole  of  London  life — the  life  of  the  streets,  of  the  city,  of  the  middle 
class — seems  at  first  sight  depicted  in  this  gallery.  Here  are  merchant,  shop- 
keeper and  clerk,  lawyer  and  client,  money-lender  and  victim,  dressmaker,  actor 
— one  knows  not  what.  Yet  there  are  great  omissions.  The  scholar,  the  divine, 
the  statesman,  the  country  gentleman,  are  absent,  partly  because  Dickens  had  no 
knowledge  of  them,  and  partly  because  he  forbore  to  hold  them  up  to  the  ridicule 
which  he  loved  to  pour  over  his  characters.  His  methods  imposed  upon  him 
certain  limitations  ;  he  aimed  at  commanding  his  reader's  attention  by  compelling 
laughter  and  tears,  but  especially  laughter.  He  who  can  command  neither  the 
one  nor  the  other  is  no  true  artist  in  fiction.  But  in  his  laughter  and  in  his  tears 
one  feels  always  the  kindly  heart  as  well  as  the  skilful  hand.  It  is  for  the  former 
- — for  the  deeply  human  heart — even  more  than  for  the  latter,  that  the  world  will 
continue  to  love  the  memory  of  Charles  Dickens. 


ROBERT   BROWNING 

(1812-1889) 


ROBERT  Browning  was  born  in 
181 2,  at  Camberwell,  England. 
His  father  was  a  clerk  highly  placed 
in  the  house  of  Rothschild,  and  there 
are  still  living  those  who  remember 
the  excitement  of  the  elder  man  and 
of  his  friends  in  New  Court,  when  the 
time  came  for  the  son's  first  play  to  be 
produced  at  Covent  Garden.  He  was 
a  Dissenter,  and  for  this  reason  his 
son's  education  did  not  proceed  on  the 
ordinary  English  lines.  The  training 
which  Robert  Browning  received  was 
more  individual,  and  his  reading  was 
wider  and  less  accurate,  than  would 
have  been  the  case  had  he  gone  to 
Eton  or  ^Vinchester.  Thus,  though 
to  the  end  he  read  Greek  with  the 
deepest  interest,  he  never  could  be 
called  a  Greek  scholar.  His  poetic 
turn  declared  itself  rather  early,  and  in  1835  he  had  a  poem,  "Pauline,"  ready 
for  the  press.  But  publication  costs  money,  and  his  business-like  father  did 
not  see  any  chance  of  returns  from  poetry.     A  kind  aunt,  however,  came  to 


192  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

the  rescue,  and  presented  the  young  poet  with  the  cost  of  printing  the  lit- 
tle book,  ;^30.  It  was  published  at  the  price  of  a  few  shillings,  and  of  course 
did  not  sell ;  but  the  author  had  the  curious  satisfaction  of  seeing  a  copy  of 
this  original  edition  bring  twenty-five  guineas  under  the  hammer  a  few  years 
ago.  "Pauline"  was  not  reprinted  till  the  issue  of  the  six -volume  edition 
of  Mr.  Browning's  works,  in  1869.  It  was  followed  by  the  more  ambitious 
"  Paracelsus,"  a  striking  attempt  to  fill  a  mediseval  outline  with  a  compact 
body  of  modern  thougiit ;  but  in  spite  of  the  lovely  lyric,  "  Over  the  sea  our 
galleys  went,"  and  in  spite  of  other  beauties,  the  public  did  not  heed  the  book, 
and  it  had  no  success  except  with  a  very  small  circle.  It  must  be  remembered 
that  those  days  were  days  of  poetic  exhaustion.  Shelley,  Byron,  and  Scott  were 
dead ;  the  year  before,  Coleridge  had  followed  them  to  the  grave  ;  Wordsworth 
was  old,  and  his  muse  no  longer  spoke  with  her  accents  of  an  earlier  day.  Amid 
a  mass  of  "  keepsake  "  literature,  affectations,  and  mediocrity,  the  still,  small  voice 
of  the  "  Poems  by  Two  Brothers  "  was  heard  by  few,  and  that  of  "  Paracelsus  " 
was  heard  by  few^er  still. 

Two  years  later  the  young  poet  came  forward  with  the  historical  play  of 
"  Strafford,"  which  was  produced  at  Covent  Garden  with  Macready  in  the  title- 
part.  It  was  not  exactly  a  failure,  but  though  the  play  itself  and  Macready's 
acting  attracted  the  admiration  of  the  critics,  it  was  at  once  seen  that  the  drama 
contained  too  much  psychology  and  too  little  movement  for  a  popular  success. 
Mr.  Browning,  however,  did  not,  for  a  long  time  to  come,  cease  to  be  a  "  writer 
of  plays,"  though  it  was  not  till  eleven  years  after  that  another  drama  of  his, 
"A  Blot  on  the  Scutcheon,"  was  performed  on  the  stage.  The  interval,  how- 
ever, was  full  of  poetic  activity.  The  energetic  search  of  the  members  of  the 
Browning  Society,  and  especially  of  its  founder,  Mr.  Furnivall,  has  succeeded 
in  putting  on  record  the  place  of  first  publication  of  several  scattered  poems 
of  about  this  date.  Four  of  them,  including  "  Porphyria,"  and  "Johannes  Agric- 
ola,"  appeared  in  the  MontJily  Repository,  edited  by  VV.  J.  Fox,  the  Unita- 
rian minister  who  was  afterward  so  well  known  for  his  eloquent  speeches 
against  the  Corn  Laws.  In  1840  came  a  small  volume,  bound,  after  the  fashion 
of  the  time,  in  gray  paper  boards,  and  called  "  Sordello,"  after  the  Provencal  poet 
mentioned  in  the  "  Purgatory  "  of  Dante.  The  book  appeared  without  preface 
or  dedication,  but  in  the  collected  edition  of  1863  it  bears  a  note  addressed  by 
Mr.  Browning  to  his  friend  Monsieur  Milsand,  of  Dijon,  which  contains  the 
characteristic  expressions,  "  I  wrote  it  twenty-five  years  ago  for  only  a  few.  .  .  . 
My  stress  lay  on  the  incidents  in  the  development  of  a  soul  ;  little  else  is  worth 
study.  I,  at  least,  always  thought  so."  "  Sordello"  in  its  original  form  is  very 
rare  and  valuable  now,  as  all  the  early  editions  of  Mr.  Browning's  poetry  have 
become  ;  but  on  its  first  appearance  nobody  cared  for  it — it  was  regarded  as  noth- 
ing but  a  hopeless  puzzle  by  a  bewildered  and  defeated  public.  Even  now,  when 
Mr.  Browning  has  long  since  formed  his  own  public,  "  Sordello  "  is  probably  less 
read  than  any  other  work  of  his ;  it  is  too  obscure  and  confused  both  in  plot  and 
in  thought.      But  all  the  same,  there  are  many  interesting  things  in  "  Sordello," 


ROBERT    BROWNING  193 

and  among  them,  especially  at  this  moment,  are  the  references  to  the  place  which, 
for  fifty  years,  has  fascinated  the  poet.  Only  the  other  day  he  wrote  "  Asolando," 
and  half  a  century  ago  we  find  him  writing  : 

"  Lo,  on  a  health)^  brown,  and  nameless  hill 
By  sparkling  Asolo,  in  mist  and  chill, 
Morning  just  up,  higher  and  higher  runs 
A  child,  bare-foot  and  rosy." 

Asolo  appears  again  very  soon  afterward  in  the  lovely  opening  of  the  play  "  Pippa 
Passes."  This  came  first  in  the  series  which  appeared  in  the  years  1S41-46,  un- 
der the  odd  title  of  "  Bells  and  Pomegranates."  There  were  eight  numbers  of 
this  publication — thin,  yellow-covered  pamphlets,  printed  in  double  columns  of 
small  tvpe,  by  Mr.  Moxon  ;  surely  as  unattractive  a  way  as  a  poet  ever  attempted 
of  bringing  his  wares  before  the  world.  Doubtless  it  was  done  in  order  that  the 
low  price  might  appeal  to  a  large  audience,  but  we  doubt  whether  the  sale  of 
"  Bells  and  Pomegranates  "  was  ever  large.  The  series  is  exceedingly  rare  now, 
and  the  curious  who  prefer  to  read  those  noble  poems  in  this  unsightly  form  have 
to  pay  /"lo  or  ;/J'i2  for  the  privilege  of  possessing  them.  In  this  first  series  ap- 
peared all  the  author's  plays  except  "  Strafford,"  namely,  "  Pippa  Passes,"  "  King 
Victor  and  King  Charles,"  "The  Return  of  the  Druses,"  "A  Blot  on  the  Scutch- 
eon," "  Colombe's  Birthday,"  "  Luria,"  and  "  A  Soul's  Tragedy."  But,  alternat- 
ing with  these,  appeared  many  of  the  shorter  poems  which  have  long  since  passed 
into  the  common  treasure-house  of  all  who  care  for  poetry  throughout  the  Eng- 
lish-speaking world.  One  of  the  numbers  contains  the  set  called  "  Dramatic 
Lyrics,"  including  "  In  a  Gondola,"  "  Waring,"  and  "  The  Pied  Piper  of  Hame- 
lin."  Another  number  contained  "  Dramatic  Romances  and  Lyrics,"  among 
which  are  to  be  found  such  favorite  poems  as  "  How  they  Brought  the  Good 
News  from  Ghent  to  Aix,"  and  "  Saul."  In  this  group  of  poems  were  also  to 
be,  found  the  celebrated  lines  called  "The  Lost  Leader."  People  at  the  time 
supposed  that  these  indignant  verses  were  aimed  at  the  Tory  backsliding  of 
Wordsworth  ;  and,  indeed,  though  Mr.  Browning  in  after-years  denied  their  spe- 
cial applicability  to  the  old  Laureate,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  when  he  wrote 
them  he  had  Wordsworth  more  or  less  in  his  mind. 

In  1846  there  happened  to  Mr.  Browning  something  much  more  important 
than  the  publication  of  this  or  that  poem;  for  it  was  then,  on  September  12th, 
in  Marylebone  parish  church,  that  he  was  married  to  the  poetess,  Elizabeth  Bar- 
rett. Their  union  was  the  direct  result,  in  the  first  instance,  of  poetic  and  intel- 
lectual sympathy,  and  it  was  to  the  admiration  which  Miss  Barrett,  then  an  in- 
valid, felt  for  the  author  of  "  Bells  and  Pomegranates,"  that  they  owed  their  first 
introduction.  For  the  greater  part  of  their  married  life  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Browning 
lived  almost  entirely  in  Italy,  and  especially  at  that  house  in  Florence,  close  by 
the  Porta  Romana,  which  now  bears  a  tablet  with  her  name,  and  which  gave  its 
title  to  one  of  her  best-known  volumes  of  poetry.  They  had  one  child,  horn  in 
1849,  Robert   Barrett  Browning,  favorably  known  as  a  painter  and  a  sculptor. 

13 


19i  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

After  just  fifteen  years'  marriage,  Mrs.  Browning  died,  in  1861  ;  the  frail  body 
almost  literally  burnt  up  by  the  fiery  soul  within.  Of  the  closeness  of  their  union 
Mr.  Browning,  of  course,  never  spoke,  except  to  his  intimate  friends  ;  but  that  it 
was  of  a  degree  of  happiness  to  which  it  is  seldom  given  to  poor  humanity  to  at- 
tain was  made  evident  to  the  world  when  he  wrote  the  splendid  invocation  to  his 
"  Lyric  Love  "  at  the  opening  of  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book." 

During  the  first  years  of  married  life,  Mr.  Browning  wrote  little,  but  he  read 
widely  and  deeply,  and  in  1849  ^e  republished,  in  two  reasonable-sized  volumes, 
"  Paracelsus  "  and  "  Bells  and  Pomegranates,"  under  the  title  of  "  Poems,  by 
Robert  Browning."  Next  year  followed  his  most  definitely  Christian  poem. 
"  Christmas  Eve  and  Easter  Day  " — a  small  volume  in  which  the  mysteries  of 
the  Christian  religion  were  handled  in  their  relations  with  the  modern  world. 
Then,  in  1852,  followed  a  prose  publication,  which  was,  unfortunately,  founded 
upon  a  mistake,  and  which  was  at  once  suppressed  and  not  brought  to  light  until 
the  Browning  Society  reprinted  it  years  afterward.  This  was  the  celebrated 
introductory  essay  to  a  volume  purporting  to  consist  of  letters  from  Shelley.  The 
letters  were  soon  discovered  to  be  fabrications,  but  Mr.  Browning's  essay  was 
quite  independent  of  tneir  genuineness,  being  really  a  very  interesting  discussion 
on  subjective  and  objective  poetry,  and  of  Shelley's  writings  as  a  type  of  the 
former.  In  1855  came  the  two  volumes  called  "  Men  and  Women,"  and  in  their 
pages  were  to  be  found  many  of  the  poems  best  worth  reading  of  all  Mr.  Brown- 
ing's productions,  and  many  of  those  that  are  best  remembered  at  the  present 
day. 

It  is  only  somewhat  exasperating  to  the  student,  to  find  that  in  subsequent 
collected  editions  of  his  works,  Mr.  Browning  has  allowed  his  fondness  for  re- 
naming and  rearrangement  to  break  up  these  volumes,  and  to  distribute  the 
greater  part  of  their  contents  under  other  titles.  In  "Men  and  Women"  the 
intensely  dramatic  quality  of  his  genius  found  its  best  scope,  for  here  are  to  be 
found  such  masterpieces  as  "  Karshish,"  "  The  Arab  Physician,"  "  Era  Lippo  Lippi," 
"  Bishop  Blougram,"  and  "  Cleon."  It  is  amusing  to  note,  if  the  authority  of  the 
bibliographers  is  to  be  trusted,  that  these  volumes  were  reviewed,  in  the  Roman 
Catholic  paper  called  The  Rambler,  by  no  less  a  person  than  Cardinal  Wiseman, 
who  was  extremely  complimentary  to  "  Bishop  Blougram,"  and  did  not  by  any 
means  despair  of  the  writer's  conversion.  After  "Men  and  Women  "the  poet 
was  silent  for  a  long  time.  His  wife's  health  was  failing,  though  at  the  time  of 
the  war  in  Lombardy  her  burning  energy  burst  out  in  the  "  Poems  before  Con- 
gress," and  though  she  watched  the  course  of  the  struggle  with  never-ceasing  ex- 
citement. 

In  1861  the  great  grief  of  his  life  fell  upon  Mr.  Browning,  and  he  published 
nothing  new  till  1864,  when  there  appeared  the  volume  called  "Dramatis  Per- 
sonse."  It  is  pretty  safe,  however,  to  declare  that  in  this  volume,  with  "  The 
Ring  and  the  Book,"  which  was  published  in  1868,  he  reached  his  greatest  height 
of  performance.  It  is  enough  to  recall  to  the  memory  of  readers  that  "  Dramatis 
Personae"  contains  "James  Lea's  Wife,"  "  Rabbi   Ben    Ezra,"  and   "  Prospice," 


ROBERT    BROWNING  195 

Then,  four  years  later,  as  we  have  said,  appeared  four  volumes  of  that  marvellous 
performance,  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book,"  a  poetic  and  psychological  grappling 
with  the  question  suggested  to  the  poet  by  the  account  of  a  Roman  trial  that 
took  place  a  couple  of  centuries  ago.  Whether  anyone  else  in  any  country  has 
ever  before  ventured  to  publish  a  poem  in  four  simultaneous  volumes,  we  cannot 
say  ;  but,  in  spite  of  its  length  and  difficulty,  "  The  Ring  and  the  Book  "  was 
and  is  one  of  the  most  successful  of  the  author's  works.  It  has  every  right  to  be 
so,  for  nowhere  does  he  exhibit  in  a  manner  so  sustained,  and  yet  so  varied,  his 
own  extraordinary  insight  into  characters  and  motives  entirely  dissimilar. 

Since  that  remarkable  work  was  given  to  the  world,  Mr.  Browning  has  at- 
tempted nothing  approaching  it  in  magnitude,  or  in  the  demand  it  made  upon 
the  sustained  exertion  of  high  intellectual  powers.  But  he  left  his  admirers  no 
room  to  complain  of  diminished  fecundity  or  of  decaying  vigor.  "  Balaustion's 
Adventure,"  including  a  transcript  from  Euripides,  appeared  in  1871,  to  prove 
his  undiminished  insight  and  inexhaustible  interest  in  spiritual  analysis.  It  was 
followed  by  "  Prince  Hohenstiel-Schwangau,  Saviour  of  Society,"  a  book  sug- 
gested by  the  collapse  of  the  French  Empire,  and  recalling  the  scathing  satire 
with  which  he  lashed  the  impostures  of  spiritualism  in  "  Sludge  the  Medium." 
In  1872  he  published  "  Fifine  at  the  Fair,"  to  the  delight  of  those  who  loved 
him,  and,  as  usual,  to  the  irritation  of  those  who  did  not.  "  Red  Cotton 
Nightcap  Country"  appeared  in  the  following  year;  and,  after  an  interval  of 
two  years,  was  followed  by  "Aristophanes'  Apology."  Again,  after  a  similar 
interval,  he  gave  us  "  The  Agamemnon  of  ^Eschylus  Transcribed."  In  1879 
came  "Dramatic  Idylls,"  with  the  stirring  ballad  of  "  Herv^  Riel,"  which,  as 
some  think,  roused  the  Laureate  to  emulative  effort.  "  Jocoseria,"  published  in 
1883,  reclaimed  many  of  his  earlier  admirers,  who  had  been  estranged  by  what 
they  regarded  as  the  extravagance  and  whimsicality,  not  to  speak  of  the  obscurity 
and  ruggedness,  of  so  many  of  his  later  works.  "  Jocoseria,"  in  fact,  recalls 
"  Men  and  Women  "  rather  than  the  "  Fifines,"  the  "  Hohenstiel-Schwangaus,"  and 
the  "  Red  Cotton  Nightcap  Countries  "  of  a  later  and  less  happily-inspired  period. 
"  Ferishtah's  Fancies  and  Parleyings  with  Certain  People  of  Importance  in  their 
Day  "  was  the  rather  cumbrous  title  of  a  still  later  volume  ;  and  last  of  all  ap- 
peared "  Asolando,"  a  work  which  displays  all  the  old  qualities,  the  old  fire,  and 
the  old  audacity,  apparently  untouched  by  advancing  years,  or  even  by  imminent 
death.      He  died  the  same  month  that  it  appeared,  December,  1889. 

It  has  been  Mr.  Browning's  fate  to  divide  the  reading  world  into  two  hostile 
camps.  There  are  no  lukewarm  friends  on  his  side;  and  from  those  who  have 
never  acquired  a  taste  for  the  strong  wine  of  his  muse,  it  is  sometimes  difficult  to 
extort  recognition  of  the  vigor,  the  insight,  the  tenderness,  and  the  variety  of  in- 
tellectual sympathy  which  characterize  the  man,  even,  if  we  make  abstraction  of 
the  poet.  An  industrious  and  enthusiastic  society  devoted  itself  during  his  life- 
time to  the  promotion  of  a  taste  for  his  writings,  but  even  that  singular  tribute  to 
the  strength  of  his  personality  does  not  shut  the  mouth  of  the  sceptic.  Those 
who  love  the  poets  of  prettinesses,  of  artificial  measures,  and  dainty  trifles  have 


196 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


at  the  present  day  an  almost  embarrassing  wealth  of  choice.  But  Mr.  Brown- 
ing in  his  own  sphere  had  no  rival  and  no  imitator.  No  other  so  boldly  faces 
the  problems  of  life  and  death,  no  other  like  him  braces  the  reader  as  with  the 
breath  of  a  breeze  from  the  hills,  and  no  other  gives  like  him  the  assurance  that 
we  have  to  do  with  a  man.  I  lis  last  public  words  are  the  fit  description  of  his 
strenuous  attitude  through  all  his  literary  work  : 

"  Strive  and  thrive  !  "  cry  "  Speed — fight  on,  fare  ever 
There  as  here  !  " 


OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES 

Bv  Francis  H.  Underwood 
(1809-1894) 


that  simple  stanza  unmoved. 

word  could  be  chanired  anv  mure  than  in 


ABRAH.xM  Lincoln,  it  is  said,  was 
one  day  talking  with  a  friend 
about  favorite  poems,  and  repeated 
with  deep  feeling  the  well-known 
classic  stanza : 

"  The  mossy  marbles  rest 
On  the  lips  that  he  has  prest 

In  their  bloom  ; 
And  the  names  he  loved  to  hear 
Have  been  carved  for  many  a  year 

On  the  tomb." 

"That  verse,"  he  said,  "was  written 
by  a  man  by  the  name  of  Holmes." 
If  the  manner  of  referring  to  the 
authorship  was  little  flattering,  the 
honest  admiration  of  the  great- 
hearted President  might  atone  for  it. 
An  attorney  in  a  country  town  in 
Illinois  might  well  have  been  unac- 
quainted with  the  reputation  of  a 
poet  away  in  Massachusetts,  whose 
lines,  perhaps,  he  had  seen  only  in 
the  newspapers. 

No  reader  of  feeling  ever  passed 
It  is  for  all  time  not  to   be  forgotten.      Not  a 


'The  Bugle  Song." 


Its  pathos  is  all 


OLIVER   WENDELL   HOLiMES  197 

the  more   surprising  in  connection  with  the  quaint  humor  in  the  description  of 

the  old  man  who  is  the  subject  of  the  poem.     There  is  a  delicious  Irish  character 

in  this,  as  in  many  other  pieces  of  Holmes,  reminding  us  of  the  familiar  couplet 

of  Moore — 

"Erin,  the  smile  and  the  tear  in  thine  eyes 

Blend  like  the  rainbow  that  hangs  in  thy  skies." 

"  The  Last  Leaf,"  from  which  the  stanza  is  quoted,  was  written  over  fifty 
years  ago,  when  the  author  was  a  little  more  than  twenty-one.  There  are  a  few 
others  of  the  same  period  which  may  have  been  considered  trifles  at  first,  but 
which  seem  to  have  slowly  acquired  consistence,  so  that  while  they  are  still  mar- 
vels of  airy  grace,  they  are  as  firm  as  the  carved  foliage  on  a  Gothic  capital. 

Not  many  writers  live  long  enough  to  see  themselves  recognized  as  classics  ; 
the  benign  judgment  is  more  frequently  tardy  ;  and  then  it  happens,  as  De  Mus- 
set  says,  that  "  Fame  is  a  plant  which  grows  upon  a  tomb."  It  takes  years  of 
repetition  to  impress  new  ideas  in  literature  into  the  hearts  and  memories  of 
men  ;  and,  as  literary  cycles  move,  the  age  of  Holmes  is  still  new.  The  noblest 
poetry  in  the  language,  from  the  unborrowed  splendor  of  Shakespeare  to  the 
sparkling  reflections  of  Gray,  doubtless  gave  to  contemporaries  a  sense  of 
strangeness  at  first.  Time  was  needed  to  harden  the  fresh  lines,  as  well  as  to  win 
for  them  a  place  among  the  elder  and  accepted  models. 

Holmes's  father  was  minister  to  the  Congregational  church  in  Cambridge,  a 
man  of  ability  and  author  of  some  historical  works.  He  lived  in  a  venerable 
house  of  the  ante- Revolutionary  period,  which  stood  near  the  college  grounds,  and 
was  demolished  a  few  years  ago  to  make  room  for  a  new  academic  building.  One 
of  Holmes's  most  characteristic  articles  is  his  description  of  "The  Old  Gambrel- 
roofed  House."  In  the  time  of  his  youth  there  were  people  in  Cambridge  who 
remembered  the  march  of  the  British  troops  on  their  way  to  Lexington  and  Con- 
cord in  1775.  The  speech  and  the  manners  of  the  colonists  long  retained  the  old 
English  stamp,  and  the  earliest  of  them  had  been  contemporaries  of  Bunyan  and 
almost  of  Shakespeare^  and  so  Holmes  must  have  heard,  as  I  when  a  boy  heard 
in  another  county,  phrases  and  tones  which  could  not  have  differed  much  from 
those  of  Shakespeare's  common  people.  The  influence  of  this  is  seen  in  his  mas- 
tery of  what  is  called  the  Yankee  dialect,  development  of  old  chimney-cornei 
English.  For  the  same  reason  there  is  visible  in  his  writings  also  some  of  tha; 
homely  astuteness  which  seems  to  have  died  out  with  the  polish  of  modern 
manners. 

After  completing  his  classical  and  medical  studies.  Dr.  Holmes  spent  two 
years  in  Europe,  principally  in  Paris,  and  then  settled  in  Boston  as  a  practising 
physician.  Later  he  became  a  professor  of  anatomy,  and  remained  in  service  un- 
til within  a  few  years.  Thus  his  duties  took  him  away  from  his  native  Cambridge 
— although  his  heart  never  migrated — and  turned  him  from  the  pursuit  of  poetry, 
except  as  a  recreation.  His  recreation,  however,  must  have  been  quite  steadily 
indulged  in,  since  his  occasional  poems  had  grown  to  a  goodlv  volume  before  he 
was  forty  years  of  age.     The  great  popularity  of  his  later  works  has  somewhat 


198  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

overshadowed  the  early  poems,  but  there  is  ample  evidence  of  (jenius  in  these  first- 
fruits.  None  of  them  arc  meant  to  be  thrilling  or  profound,  l)ut  they  all  have 
some  characteristic  grace,  some  unexpected  stroke  of  wit,  some  fascinating  mel- 
ody. I  do  not  know  any  poems  of  a  similar  class  which  afiford  such  unfailing 
delight.  It  is  true  they  are  mundane  and  their  wit  has  often  a  satiric,  "  know- 
ing "  air  ;  but  the  pleasantry  is  never  mocking  or  malevolent  ;  and  the  exuber- 
ance of  spirit  is  contagious.  Such  a  poem  as  "Terpsichore"  (1843)  is  inimitable 
in  its  suggestions.  The  lines  have  a  springing  movement,  an  elastic  pose.  To 
appreciate  it  the  reader  must  "wait  till  he  comes  to  forty  year."  "  Urania"  has 
also  many  fine  passages,  grave  as  well  as  gay  ;  many  of  its  hints  were  developed 
later  with  brilliant  effect  in  the  "  Autocrat."  This  "  rhymed  lesson  "  touches  with 
felicity  the  prevailing  vulgarities  and  solecisms  in  manners,  dress,  and  pronuncia 
tion,  and  suggests,  by  anticipation,  the  jovial  reign  of  a  monarch  who  at  his  break- 
fast-table lays  aside  his  robes  of  majesty  and  sometimes  plays  the  role  of  his  servi- 
tor, the  merry  philosopher  in  motley. 

Naturally  our  author's  reputation  and  his  well-known  brilliancy  in  conversa- 
tion made  him  a  great  favorite  in  society.  For  many  years  he  was  virtually  the 
laureate  of  Boston  and  Cambridge,  and  produced  a  great  number  of  odes  and 
hymns  for  public  occasions.  He  of  all  men  seemed  to  have  the  invention,  the 
dash,  and  the  native  grace  which  give  to  occasional  verse  its  natural  and  sponta- 
neous air.  This  facility  is  surely  not  a  cause  for  reproach.  Such  verse  may  seem 
easy,  but  it  is  easy  only  for  i  genius.  In  the  lightest  of  his  odes  there  is  stuff 
and  workmanship  far  removed  from  the  negligent  ease  of  vets  dc  societd. 

A  reputation  for  wit  may  be  as  injurious  to  a  poet  as  to  a  would-be  bishop. 
People  could  hardly  be  persuaded  to  take  Sydney  Smith  seriously,  and  the  world 
has  been  slow  in  recognizing  the  solid  qualities,  the  keen  insight,  the  imagination, 
and  poetic  feeling  of  Holmes.      It  is  only  one  of  the  facets  of  his  brilliant  mind. 

At  the  dinner  where  the  twelve  original  contributors  of  the  Atlantic  Monthly 
met,  the  part  which  Holmes  was  to  take  was  a  matter  of  lively  anticipation.  The 
magazine  had  been  projected  for  the  purpose  of  uniting  the  literary  forces  of  the 
North  in  favor  of  universal  freedom  ;  but  Holmes  had  no  part  in  its  direction. 
Lowell  prophesied  at  the  time  that  the  doctor  would  carry  off  the  honors.  In 
the  first  number  there  was  an  article  by  Motley,  a  fine  poem  by  Longfellow,  one 
by  Whittier,  a  piece  of  charming  classic  comedy  by  Lowell,  a  group  of  four  strik- 
ing poems  by  Emerson,  some  short  stories,  articles  on  art  and  finance,  and  the 
"  Autocrat  of  the  Breakfast  Table."  What  would  not  modern  philosophers  give 
for  a  similar  combination  to-day  !  Still,  the  enterprise  might  have  failed  but  for 
the  immediate  interest  awakened  by  the  original  thought  and  style  of  Holmes. 
The  sensation  was  new,  like  that  of  a  sixth  sense.  The  newspapers  quoted  from 
the  "  Autocrat  ;  "  it  was  everywhere  talked  about,  and  in  a  short  time  its  fame 
went  through  the  nation. 

The  "Autocrat"  was  succeeded  by  the  "  Professor"  and  the  "Poet."  The 
talk  of  the  "  Professor  "  was  somewhat  more  abstruse,  though  equally  interesting 
to  cultivated  readers.     The  "  Poet  "  attacked  the  dogma  of  the  endless  duration 


OLIVER   WENDELL   HOLMES  199 

of  future  punishment.  The  "  Autocrat  "  was  easily  superior  in  freshness  as  in 
popularity. 

Two  novels  also  appeared — "Elsie  Venner"  and  "The  Guardian  Angel." 
They  have  undoubted  merits,  showing  the  keen  thought,  the  descriptive  power, 
and  the  pla)'  of  fanc)^  which  are  so  characteristic  of  the  author,  and  each  has  a 
subtle  motive  to  which  the  characteristic  incidents  are  made  subservient.  But 
Dr.  Holmes  is  not  great  as  a  novelist  as  he  is  great  in  other  things.  The  stories 
in  one  aspect  are  ambulatory  psychological  problems,  rather  than  fresh  studies  of 
characters  conceived  without  favoritism,  with  blended  good  and  evil,  wisdom  and 
weakness — as  God  creates  them.  To  produce  new  types,  of  universal  interest, 
is  given  to  few  novelists.  There  have  been  scarcely  more  than  a  score  of  such 
creators  since  Cadmus. 

It  was  with  some  surprise  that  I  read  lately  a  lament  that  Dr.  Holmes  had 
not  written  "  a  great  novel  " — a  task  which  would  have  been  as  unsuitable  to  him 
as  to  Dr.  Johnson  or  to  Montaigne.  It  is  not  a  question  of  a  greater  or  less  tal- 
ent, but  of  a  wholly  different  talent — as  distinct  as  metaphysics  and  portrait- 
painting.  The  same  critic  complains  because  Holmes  has  not  been  "  in  earnest" 
like  Carlyle.  While  the  genius  of  that  great  writer  is  indisputable,  I  submit  that 
one  Carlyle  in  a  generation  is  enough  ;  another  is  impossible.  That  rugged  Titan 
did  his  appointed  work  with  fidelity.  But  is  every  author  to  lay  about  him  with 
an  iron  fiail  ?  Is  there  no  place  for  playful  satirists  of  manners,  for  essayists  who 
dissolve  philosophy  and  science,  who  teach  truth,  manliness,  and  courtesy  by  epi- 
gram, and  who  make  life  beautiful  with  the  glow  of  poetry  ?  The  magnolia  can- 
not be  the  oak,  although  unhappy  critics  would  have  a  writer  be  something  which 
he  is  not.  It  is  enough  that  Holmes  has  charmed  myriads  of  readers  who  might 
never  have  felt  his  influence  if  he  had  been  grimly  in  "earnest,"  and  that  he  has 
inculcated  high  ideals  of  taste,  character,  and  living. 

By  the  time  Holmes  had  reached  his  fiftieth  year  he  was  nearing  the  summit 
of  fame.  His  readers  were  the  cultivated  classes  of  the  whole  English-speaking 
world,  and  he  was  not  merely  admired,  his  genial  humor  had  won  for  him  uni- 
versal love  ;  his  unique  personality  was  as  dear  as  his  writings.  There  is  not 
room  in  the  limits  allowed  me  to  dwell  on  the  style  of  the  "  Autocrat ; "  fortu- 
nately neither  analysis  nor  eulogy  is  necessary.  The  variety  of  topics,  the  sure, 
swift  touches  in  treatment,  the  frequent  gleam  of  imagery,  and  the  lovely  vign- 
ette of  verse,  altogether  form  an  attraction  for  which  there  are  few  parallels  in 
literature. 

From  the  gay  and  jaunty  verse  of  the  poet's  youth  to  his  strong  and  passion- 
ate lyrics  of  the  war  there  was  a  surpassing  change,  and  it  will  be  interesting  to 
trace  it  in  his  life,  and  in  the  course  of  historic  events. 

In  his  early  manhood  he  took  the  world  as  he  found  it,  and  did  not  trouble 
himself  about  reforms  or  isms.  He  had  only  good-humored  banter  for  the  Abo- 
litionists, just  as  he  had  for  non-resistants  and  spirit-rappers.  When  progressive 
people  were  in  a  ferment  with  the  new  transcendental  philosophy  (deduced  from 
the  preaching  of  Channing  and  the  essays  of  Emerson),  and  were  fascinated  by 


200  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

the  monologues  of  Alcott  and  the  sibylline  utterances  of  Margaret  Fuller  ;  when 
voung  enthusiasts,  in  their  socialistic  home  at  Brook  Farm,  dreamed  of  the  near 
reign  of  human  brotherhood  ;  when  Lowell  was  writing  "  The  Present  Crisis,"  a 
poem  glowing  with  genius  as  with  apostolic  zeal ;  when  feebler  brethren,  blown 
upon  by  new  winds  of  doctrine,  imagined  themselves  spiritual  and  profound,  and 
felt  deep  thrills  in  pronouncing  the  words  Soul  and  Infinite  with  nasal  solemnity, 
Holmes,  fully  master  of  himself,  and  holding  instinctively  to  his  nil  admirari, 
trained  his  light  batteries  on  the  new  schools,  and  hit  their  eccentricities  and 
foibles  with  a  comic  fusillade. 

From  this  bellicose  time  it  was  nearly  forty  years  to  the  appearance  of 
Holmes'  admiring  and  reverent  life  of  Emerson,  and  in  that  long  and  stirring 
period  there  was  much  for  him  to  learn,  and  something  to  unlearn.  Who  does 
not  learn  much  in  forty  years  ?  For  one  thing,  the  character  and  mind  of  the 
poet-philosopher  were  at  length  clearly  revealed,  and  the  uneasy  swarm  of  imita- 
tors had  shrunk  out  of  sight.  And  as  to  slavery,  the  eyes  of  all  men  had  been 
opened.  Not  only  Holmes,  but  the  majority  of  well-meaning  men,  hitherto 
standing  aloof,  were  taught  by  great  events.  Many  who  admitted  the  wrong  of 
slavery  had  believed  themselves  bound  to  inaction  by  the  covenants  inserted  in 
the  Federal  Constitution.  Some  had  felt  the  weight  of  party  obligations.  Some 
resented  the  fierce  denunciation  of  the  Church  for  its  indifference  to  a  vital  ques- 
tion of  morals.  But  I  believe  more  were  deterred  from  siding  with  the  Abolition- 
ists by  reason  of  their  intimate  connection  with  other  causes.  They  were  nearly 
all  believers  in  "woman's  rights,"  and  at  that  time  those  "rights"  were  chiefly  to 
wear  short  hair  and  loose  trousers,  and  talk  indefinitely.  Everything  established 
was  attacked,  from  churches  and  courts  to  compulsory  schools  and  vaccination. 
The  most  vivid  of  my  recollections  of  forty  years  ago  are  the  scenes  at  the  anti- 
slavery  conventions.  There  were  cadaverous  men  with  long  hair  and  full  beards, 
very  unusual  ornaments  then,  with  far-away  looks  in  their  eyes  in  repose,  but 
with  ferocity  when  excited,  who  thought  and  talked  with  vigor,  but  who  never 
knew  when  to  stop.  There  was  one  silent  and  patient  brother,  I  remember, 
whose  silvery  hair  and  beard  were  never  touched  by  shears,  and  who  in  all  sea- 
sons wore  a  suit  of  loose  flannel  that  had  once  been  white.  There  was  a  woman 
with  an  appalling  voice,  and  yet  with  a  strange  eloquence.  And  there  was  one 
who  always  insisted  on  speaking  out  of  order,  and  who  always  had  to  be  carried 
out  of  the  hall,  struggling  and  shouting  as  she  was  borne  along  by  some  sufifering 
brother  and  a  policeman.  Not  all  the  moral  earnestness  of  Garrison,  the  ma- 
tronly dignity  of  Lucretia  Mott,  the  lovely  voice  and  refined  manners  of  Lucy 
Stone,  nor  the  magnificent  oratory  of  Wendell  Phillips,  could  atone  for  these 
sights  and  sounds.     Lowell  had  written  : 

"Then  to  side  with  Truth  is  noble,  when  we  share  her  wretched  crust, 
Ere  her  cause  bring  fame  and  profit,  and  'tis  prosperous  to  be  just." 

But  to  men  of  delicate  nerves  it  was  not  sharing  Truth's  crust  that  made  the  dif- 
ficulty so  much  as  the  other  uncongenial  company  at  her  august  table.     The  po- 


OLIVER    WENDELL    HOLMES  201 

litical  anti-sla\^ery  men,  who  came  later,  and  who  won  the  triumph,  had  none  of 
these  uncomely  surroundings,  although  at  the  beginning  they  encountered  as 
much  odium. 

When  the  first  gun  was  fired  on  Fort  Sumter,  the  cause  of  the  slave  and  of 
the  despised  Abolitionists  became  the  cause  of  all.  Then  could  be  felt  the  force 
of  the  sentiment  which  long  before  had  won  the  pitying  muse  of  Longfellow, 
which  had  inspired  the  strains  of  Lowell,  and  which  had  led  the  Quaker  Whittier 
— minstrel  and  prophet  at  once — into  the  thick  of  the  strife.  Then  it  could  be 
seen  that  the  cause  of  eternal  justice  was  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  vagaries 
of  half-crazed  agitators  who  were  bent  on  curing  all  human  ills  by  moral  suasion 
and  bran  bread.  The  thunder  of  cannon  cleared  the  atmosphere.  The  queru- 
lous voices  of  sectaries  were  hushed.  The  hearts  of  the  loyal  North  throbbed  as 
one  heart.     There  was  but  one  cry,  and  it  was  "  Union  and  Liberty." 

In  a  high  sense  this  was  a  decisive  period  in  the  life  of  Holmes.  From  the 
outbreak  of  the  war  he  took  an  enthusiastic  part  as  a  patriot  for  the  preservation 
of  the  Union.  His  eldest  son,  now  a  Justice  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Massachu- 
setts, went  out  with  the  volunteers  as  a  captain,  and  the  father's  "  Hunt  "  for  him 
after  a  battle  is  well  remembered  by  readers  of  the  Atlantic.  At  the  time  when 
the  bravest  of  all  classes  were  going  forward  to  form  new  regiments  and  to  fill  up 
the  shattered  lines  of  the  older  ones,  his  lyrics  came  to  the  souls  of  loyal  men 
with  thrills  of  exultation.  No  man  in  those  gloomy  days  could  read  them  with- 
out tears.  I  have  seen  suppressed  sobs  and  eyes  glistening  in  tear-mist  when 
they  were  sung  in  public  assemblies.  The  people  of  this  land  have  had  no  such 
time  of  heartache,  of  alternate  dread  and  solemn  joy,  since  the  Revolution. 
When  the  fate  of  a  nation  was  in  suspense,  when  death  had  claimed  a  member 
from  almost  every  family,  and  when  the  bitter  struggle  was  to  be  fought  out 
man  to  man,  the  phrases  we  might  idly  read  in  time  of  peace  had  a  new  and 
startling  meaning.  The  words  flashed  in  all  eyes  and  set  all  hearts  on  fire. 
These  songs  of  the  war  by  Holmes  will  take  their  place  with  the  grand  and 
touching  ode  of  Lowell,  and  with  the  stately  and  triumphal  "  Laus  Deo  !  "  of 
Whittier. 

The  most  perfect  of  Holmes's  smaller  poems  are  probably  those  that  appeared 
in  the  "Autocrat."  "The  Chambered  Nautilus"  is  a  fortunate  conception, 
wrought  with  exquisite  art.  Equally  striking  is  "  Sun  and  Shadow,"  a  poem 
which  brinafs  me  delightful  associations,  as  I  saw  it  while  the  ink  was  still  wet 
upon  the  page  where  it  was  written. 

There  is  no  need  of  dwelling  upon  his  comic  poems,  such  as  the  logical  catas- 
trophe of  the  "One-Horse  Shay,"  as  they  are  fully  appreciated,  so  much  so  that 
they  have  doubtless  led  to  the  undervaluing  of  his  more  serious  efforts. 

He  who  saw  Dr.  Holmes  twenty  years  ago  at  leisure  in  liis  library  will  not 
soon  forget  his  impressions.  In  his  mature  manhood  he  was  short  and  slender 
without  being  meagre,  erect  and  firm  in  his  shoes.  His  hair  was  abundant,  if 
somewhat  frosty,  his  forehead  fair  but  not  full  ;  his  eyes  bluish  gray  ;  and  his 
uTouth  as  changeable  as  Scotch  weather.     If  in  front  his  head  seemed  small,  in 


202  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

profile  its  capacity  was  evident,  for  the  horizontal  measure  from  the  eyes  back- 
ward was  long.  If  the  base  of  the  brain  is  the  seat  of  its  motive  power,  his 
should  not  be  wanting  in  force.  An  axe  that  is  to  fell  an  oak  must  have  weight 
back  of  the  socket. 

In  repose  his  clear-cut  and  shaven  lips  indicated  firmness  and  prompt  decision, 
a  self-contained  nature,  well-reasoned  and  settled  opinions;  but  when  he  spoke, 
or  was  deeply  interested,  or  when  his  eyes  began  to  kindle,  his  mouth  became 
wonderfully  expressive.  There  was  a  swift  play  upon  his  features,  a  mobility 
which  told  of  a  sensitive  and  delicate  nature.  And  those  features  were  so  sharply 
designed,  free  from  the  adipose  layers  and  cushions  that  round  so  many  faces  into 
harmonious  vacuity.  His  smile  was  fascinating  and  communicative  ;  you  were 
forced  to  share  his  feelings.  His  welcome  was  hearty,  and  sometimes  breezy; 
you  felt  it  in  his  sympathetic  hand-grasp  as  well  as  in  his  frank  speech.  When 
conversation  was  launched  he  was  more  than  fluent  ;  there  was  a  fulness  of  apt 
words  in  new  and  predestined  combinations  ;  they  flowed  like  a  hill-side  brook, 
now  bubbling  with  merriment,  now  deep  and  reflective,  like  the  same  current  led 
into  a  quiet  pool.  Poetic  similes  were  the  spontaneous  flowering  of  his  thought ; 
his  wit  detonated  in  epigrams,  and  his  fancy  revelled  in  the  play  of  words.  His 
courtesy,  meanwhile,  was  unfailing  ;  a  retort  never  became  a  club  in  his  hands  to 
brain  an  opponent,  nor  did  he  let  fly  the  arrows  which  sting  and  rankle.  His 
enunciation  was  clear,  but  rapid  and  resistless.  Whoever  heard  him  at  his  best 
came  to  wonder  if  there  had  ever  been  another  man  so  thoroughly  alive,  in  whom 
every  fibre  was  so  fine  and  tense. 


PHIDIAS 


203 


PAINTERS   AND   SCULPTORS 


PHIDIAS  * 

By  Clarence  Cook 
(about  500-432  B.C.) 

'HiDiAS,  one  of  the  greatest  sculptors  the  world  has  seen,  and  whose 
name  has  become,  as  it  were,  the  synonym  of  his  art,  was  born  at 
Athens  about  500  e.c.  He  belonged  to  a  family  of  artists,  none  of 
whom  indeed  were  distinguished  in  their  profession,  but  their  varied 
occupations  furnished  the  atmosphere  in  which  such  a  talent  as  that 
of  Phidias  could  best  be  fostered  and  brought  to  maturity.  His  father  was  Char- 
mides,  who  is  believed  to  have  been  an  artist,  because  the  Greeks,  in  their  in- 
scriptions, did  not  associate  the  name  of  the  father  with  that  of  the  son  unless 
both  were  of  the  same  calling.  A  brother  of  Phidias,  Panoenos,  was  a  painter, 
and  is  mentioned  among  those  artists,  twenty  or  more  in  number,  who  in  conjunc- 
tion with  Polygnotus,  one  of  the  chief  painters  of  his  day,  were  employed  in  the 
decoration  of  the  Poecile  or  Painted  Portico,  one  of  the  many  beautiful  build- 
ings erected  by  Cimon.  The  Poecile  was  simply  a  long  platform,  with  a  roof 
supported  by  a  row  of  columns  on  one  side  and  by  a  wall  on  the  other.  It  was 
called  "  the  painted,"  because  the  wall  at  the  back  was  covered  with  a  series  of 
large  historical  pictures  containing  many  figures,  and  recording  some  of  the  chief 
events  of  the  time,  together  with  others  relating  to  an  earlier  and  more  shadowy 
epoch.  The  subject  of  the  painting,  executed,  at  least  in  part,  by  the  brother  of 
Phidias,  was  the  Battle  of  Marathon,  in  which  great  event  it  is  thought  he  may 
himself  have  taken  part. 

The  boyhood  of  Phidias  fell  in  a  time  of  national  revival,  when  under  the 
influence  of  an  ennobling  political  excitement,  all  the  arts  were  quickened  to  a 
fresh,  original,  and  splendid  growth.  The  contest  between  the  Greeks  and  Per- 
sians, which  had  begun  with  the  Ionian  revolt,  was  in  full  activity  at  the  time  of 
his  birth.  He  was  ten  years  old  when  the  battle  of  Marathon  was  fought,  and 
when  he  was  twenty,  four  of  the  most  striking  events  in  the  history  of  Greece 
were  crowded  into  a  single  year  ;  the  battle  of  Thermopylas,  the  victory  at 
Salamis,  and  the  twin  glories  of  Plata.ni  and  Mycale.  His  early  youth,  therefore, 
was  nourished  by  the  inspiring  influences  that  come  from  the  victorious  struggle 
of  a  people  to  maintain  their  national  life.  He  was  by  no  means  the  onlv 
sculptor  of  his  time  whom  fame  remembers,  but  he  alone,  rejecting  trivial 
themes,  consecrated  his  talent  to  the  nobler  subjects  of  his  country's  religious 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


204  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

life  and  the  ideal  conception  of  her  protecting  gods.  No  doubt,  Phidias,  like  all 
who  are  born  with  the  artistic  temperament,  would  be  interested  from  childhood 
in  the  progress  of  the  splendid  works  with  which  Athens  was  enriching  herself 
under  the  rule  of  Cimon.  But  his  interest  must  have  been  greatly  increased  by 
the  fact  that  his  brother  Panoenos  was  actively  engaged  in  the  decoration  of  one 
of  those  buildings.  It  would  be  natural  that  he  should  be  often  drawn  to  the 
place  where  his  brother  was  at  work,  and  that  the  sight  of  so  many  artists,  most 
of  them  young  men,  filled  with  the  generous  ardor  of  youth,  and  inspired  by  the 
nature  of  their  task,  should  have  stirred  in  him  an  answering  enthusiasm.  It 
gives  us  a  thrill  of  pleasure  to  read  in  the  list  of  these  youths  the  name  of  the 
great  tragic  poet,  Euripides,  who  began  life  as  a  painter,  and  in  whose  plays  we 
find  more  than  one  reference  to  the  art.  It  cannot  be  thought  unreasonable  to 
suppose  that  two  such  intelligences  as  these  must  have  had  an  attraction  for  one 
another,  and  that,  as  in  the  case  of  Dante  and  Giotto,  the  great  poet  and  the  great 
artist  would  be  drawn  together  by  a  likeness  in  their  taste  and  aims. 

Phidias  studied  his  art  first  at  Athens,  with  a  native  sculptor,  Hegias,  of 
whom  we  know  nothing  except  from  books.  Later,  he  went  to  Argos,  and  there 
put  himself  under  the  instruction  of  Ageladas,  a  worker  chiefly  in  bronze,  and 
very  famous  in  his  time,  of  whom,  however,  nothing  remains  but  the  memory  of 
a  few  of  his  more  notable  works.  For  us,  his  own  works  forgotten,  he  remains 
in  honor  as  the  teacher  of  Myron,  of  Polycletus,  and  of  Phidias,  the  three  chief 
sculptors  of  the  next  generation  to  his  own.  On  leaving  the  workshop  of  Agela- 
das, Phidias  executed  several  statues  that  brought  him  prominently  before  the 
public.  For  Delphi,  he  made  a  group  of  thirteen  figures  in  bronze,  to  celebrate 
the  battle  of  Marathon  and  apotheosize  the  heroes  of  Attica.  In  this  group, 
Miltiades  was  placed  in  the  centre,  between  Athena,  the  tutelary  goddess  of 
Athens,  and  Apollo,  the  guardian  of  Delphi  ;  while  on  each  side  were  five  Athe- 
nian heroes,  Theseus  and  Codrus  with  others,  arranged  in  a  semicircle.  This  im- 
portant work  was  paid  for  by  Athens  out  of  her  share  in  the  spoils  of  Marathon. 
Another  important  commission  executed  by  Phidias  was  a  statue  of  Athena  made 
for  her  temple  at  Platsea,  and  paid  for  with  the  eighty  talents  raised  by  the  con- 
tributions of  the  other  Grecian  states  as  a  reward  for  the  splendid  services  of  the 
Platceans  at  Marathon,  where  they  played  somewhat  the  same  part  as  the  Prus- 
sians at  the  battle  of  Waterloo.  The  head,  hands,  and  feet  of  this  statue  were  of 
marble,  but  the  drapery  was  of  gold  ;  so  arranged,  probably,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
great  statue  of  Athena  designed  later  by  Phidias  for  the  Parthenon,  as  to  be  re- 
movable from  the  marble  core  at  pleasure.  Phidias  made  so  many  statues  of  the 
virgin  goddess  Athena,  that  his  name  became  associated  with  hers,  as  at  a  later 
day  that  of  Raphael  was  with  the  Virgin  Mary.  In  the  first  period  of  his  artis- 
tic career,  moved  perhaps  by  his  patriotic  gratitude  for  her  intervention  in  be- 
half of  his  native  state,  he  had  represented  the  goddess  as  a  warlike  divinity,  as 
here  at  Platsea  ;  but  in  his  later  conceptions,  as  in  a  statue  made  for  the  Athenians 
of  Lemnos,  Athena  appeared  invested  with  milder  attributes,  and  with  a  graceful 
and  winning  type  of  beauty. 


PHIDIAS  205 

In  their  invasion  of  Attica  the  Persians  had  destroyed  the  city  of  Athens,  and 
the  people,  who  had  fled  to  all  quarters  of  the  peninsula  to  seek  refuge  from  the 
enemy,  returned  after  the  victory  at  Salamis  and  the  flight  of  the  Persians,  to 
find  their  homes  a  heap  of  ruins.  The  dwelling-houses  of  the  Greeks  were  every- 
where, even  in  their  largest  cities,  built  of  mean  materials  :  walls  of  stubble  over- 
laid with  stucco  and  gayly  painted.  It  was  not  long,  therefore,  before  Athens 
resumed  something  of  her  old  appearance,  with  such  improvements  as  always  fol- 
low the  rebuilding  of  a  city.  The  most  important  change  effected  was  that  brought 
about  in  the  character  of  the  great  plateau,  the  fortified  rock  of  the  Acropolis. 
Here,  as  in  many  Greek  cities,  the  temples  of  .the  gods  had  been  erected,  and 
about  them,  as  about  the  cathedrals  of  the  Middle  Ages,  there  had  grown  up  a 
swarm  of  houses  and  other  buildings  built  by  generations  of  people  who  sought 
there  at  once  the  protection  of  the  stockade  which  enclosed  the  almost  inacces- 
sible site,  and  the  still  further  safeguard  of  the  presence  of  the  divinities  in  their 
temples.  The  destructive  hand  of  the  Persian  invaders  had  swept  this  platform 
clear  of  all  these  multiplied  incumbrances,  and  in  the  rebuilding  of  the  city  it 
was  determined  to  reserve  the  Acropolis  for  military  and  religious  uses  alone. 

The  work  of  improvement  was  begun  by  Cimon,  who,  however,  confined  his 
attention  chiefly  to  the  lower  city  that  clustered  about  the  base  of  the  Acropolis. 
Here,  among  other  structures,  he  built  the  temple  of  Theseus  and  the  Painted 
Portico,  and  he  also  erected,  near  the  summit  of  the  Acropolis,  on  the  western 
side,  the  little  gem-like  temple  of  the  Wingless  Victory,  Nike  Apteros,  in  com- 
memoration of  the  success  of  the  Athenian  arms  at  the  battle  of  the  Eurymedon. 
It  was  from  Cimon  that  Phidias  received  his  first  commission  for  work  upon  the 
Acropolis,  where  later  he  was  to  build  such  a  lasting  monument  to  his  own  fame 
and  to  the  fame  of  his  native  land.  The  commission  given  him  by  Cimon  was 
to  erect  a  bronze  statue  of  Athena  which  was  to  stand  on  the  citadel,  at  once  a 
symbol  of  the  power  of  Athens  and  a  tribute  to  the  protecting  goddess  of  the 
city.  The  work  upon  the  statue  was  probably  begun  under  Cimon,  but  accord- 
ing to  Ottfried  M tiller  it  was  not  completed  at  the  death  of  Phidias.  It  stood 
in  the  open  air,  and  nearly  opposite  the  Colonnade  at  the  entrance  of  the  great 
flight  of  marble  steps  that  led  from  the  plain  to  the  summit  of  the  Acropolis,  and 
was  the  first  object  to  meet  the  eye  on  passing  through  the  gateway.  It  repre- 
sented the  goddess,  armed,  and  in  a  warlike  attitude,  from  which  it  derived  its 
name,  Athena  Promachos  :  Athena,  the  leader  of  the  battle.  With  its  pedestal 
it  stood  about  seventy  feet  high,  towering  above  the  roof  of  the  Parthenon,  the 
gilded  point  of  the  brazen  spear  held  by  the  goddess  flashing  back  the  sun  to  the 
ships  as  in  approaching  Athens  they  rounded  the  promontory  of  Sunium.  We 
read  that  the  statue  was  still  standing  so  late  as  395  a.d.,  and  it  is  said  that  its 
towering  height  and  threatening  aspect  caused  a  panic  terror  in  Alaric  and  his 
horde  of  barbarians  when  they  climbed  the  Acropolis  to  plunder  its  temple  of 
its  treasure. 

But  it  was  under  the  rule  of  Pericles  that  Phidias  was  to  find  at  Athens  his 
richest  employment.     Pericles  had  determined,  probably  by  the  advice  of  Phid- 


206  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

ias,  to  make  the  Acropolis  tlie  scat  and  centre  of  the  new  and  splendid  city  that 
was  to  arise  under  his  administration.  The  first  great  undertaking  was  the  build- 
ing of  a  temple  to  Athena  Parthenos,  Athena  the  Virgin,  a  design  believed  to  have 
been  suggested  to  Pericles  by  Phidias.  The  plans  were  intrusted  to  Ictinus,  an 
Athenian,  one  of  the  best  architects  of  the  day  ;  but  the  general  control  and 
superintendence  of  the  work  were  given  to  Phidias.  As  the  building  rose  to 
completion,  workmen  in  all  branches  of  the  arts  flocked  to  Athens  from  every 
part  of  Greece  and  were  given  full  employment  by  Phidias  in  the  decoration  and 
furnishing  of  the  temple. 

The  taste  of  Phidias  controlled  the  whole  scheme  of  decoration  applied  to  the 
building,  into  which  color  entered,  no  doubt,  to  a  much  greater  extent  than  was 
formerly  believed.  Even  after  time  and  the  destructive  hand  of  man  have  done 
their  worst,  there  still  remain  sufficient  traces  of  color  to  prove  that  the  sculpture, 
and  the  whole  upper  part  of  the  temple,  were  painted  in  bright  but  harmonious 
colors,  and  that  metal  ornaments  and  accessories  accented  the  whole  scheme 
with  glittering  points  of  light  reflected  from  their  shining  surfaces. 

The  sculptures  with  which  the  Parthenon  was  adorned  by  Phidias,  and  which 
were  executed  under  his  immediate  superintendence,  consisted  of  two  great  groups 
that  filled  the  eastern  and  western  pediments  ;  of  groups  of  two  figures  each  in 
the  ninety-two  metopes  or  panels  above  the  outer  row  of  columns  ;  and,  finally, 
the  famous  frieze  that  ran  completely  round  the  temple  itself,  just  below  the 
ceiling  of  the  colonnade,  and  at  a  height  of  about  thirty-nine  feet  from  the  floor. 

The  subject  of  the  group  that  filled  the  eastern  pediment,  the  one  above  the 
entrance  door  of  the  temple,  was  the  birth  of  Athena.  Just  how  the  event  was 
represented  we  do  not  know  because  quite  half  the  group,  including  the  princi- 
pal figures,  disappeared  very  early  in  our  era,  and  no  description  of  them  remains 
in  any  ancient  or  modern  writer.  The  group  in  the  western  pediment  repre- 
sented the  contest  between  Athena  and  Poseidon  for  the  dominion  over  Attica. 
According  to  the  legend,  the  strife  between  the  two  divinities  took  place  in  an 
assembly  of  the  gods  on  the  Acropolis,  who  were  to  determine  which  of  the  two 
contestants  should  be  the  protector  of  the  city.  To  prove  his  power,  Poseidon 
struck  the  rock  with  his  trident,  and  a  salt  spring  leaped  forth,  as  if  the  sea  itself 
had  obeyed  the  call  of  its  lord.  Athena  struck  the  ground,  and  an  olive-tree 
sprang  up,  the  emblem  of  peace  and  of  the  victories  of  commerce,  and  the  as- 
sembly awarded  the  prize  to  her.  The  goddess  having  thus  received  the  sover- 
eignty of  Athens,  it  was  but  natural  that  a  day  should  be  set  apart  for  her  spe- 
cial honor,  and  a  festival  instituted  to  commemorate  the  great  event.  This  was 
the  greater  Panathenaia,  or  All  Athenians  Day,  which  was  celebrated  every 
fourth  year  in  honor  of  the  goddess,  and  which,  as  its  name  implies,  was  taken 
part  in  by  all  the  people  of  the  city.  It  occurred  in  the  early  summer  and  lasted 
five  days.  On  the  fifth  day,  it  closed  with  a  procession  which  went  through  all 
the  chief  streets  of  the  city  and  wound  its  way  up  the  Great  Stairway  to  the 
Acropolis,  bearing  the  pcplos  or  embroidered  robe  woven  bv  young  virgin  ladies 
of  Athens,  chosen  from  the  highest  families,  and  known  for  their  skill  in  this 


PHIDIAS  207 

kind  of  work.  After  \he  pcplos  had  been  consecrated  in  the  temple  it  was  placed 
with  due  solemnities  upon  the  ancient  and  venerable  figure  of  the  goddess,  made 
of  olive-wood,  and  said  to  have  descended  from  heaven.  From  its  subject,  which 
thus  celebrates  the  Panathenaic  procession,  the  frieze  is  often  called  the  Pana- 
thenaic  frieze. 

It  is  carved  from  Pentelic  marble,  of  which  material  the  marble  buildinsf  is 
constructed.  Its  original  length,  running  as  it  did  around  the  entire  building,  was 
522.80  feet,  of  which  about  410  feet  remain.  Of  this  portion,  249  feet  are  in  the 
British  Museum  in  slabs  and  fragments ;  the  remainder  is  chiefly  in  the  Louvre, 
with  scattered  fragments  in  other  places.  As  a  connected  subject  this  was  the 
most  extensive  piece  of  sculpture  ever  made  in  Greece.  From  all  that  can  be 
gathered  from  the  study  of  the  fragments  that  remain,  the  design  of  the  frieze 
was  of  the  utmost  simplicity  and  characterized  by  the  union  of  perfect  taste  and 
clear  purpose  that  marks  all  the  work  of  the  great  sculptor.  The  subject  begins 
in  the  frieze  at  the  western  end  of  the  temple,  where  we  watch  the  assembling 
of  the  procession.  It  then  proceeds  along  the  northern  and  southern  sides  of 
the  building,  in  what  we  are  to  suppose  one  continuous  line,  moving  toward  the 
east,  since  all  the  faces  are  turned  that  way ;  and  at  the  eastern  end,  directly 
over  the  main  entrance  to  the  building,  the  two  parts  of  the  procession  meet, 
in  the  presence  of  the  magistrates  and  of  the  divinities  who  had  places  of  wor- 
ship in  Athens. 

Of  the  grace,  the  skill  in  arrangement,  the  variety  of  invention,  the  happy 
union  of  movement  and  repose  shown  in  this  work,  not  only  artists  —  men 
best  fitted  to  judge  its  merits  from  a  technical  point  of  view — but  the  culti- 
vated portion  of  the  public,  and  a  large  and  ever-increasing  circle  of  every-day 
people,  have  by  common  consent  agreed  in  praise.  By  the  multiplication  of 
casts,  to  be  found  now  in  all  our  principal  museums,  we  are  enabled  to  study  and 
to  enjoy  the  long  procession  even  better  than  it  could  have  been  enjoyed  in  its 
original  place,  where  it  must  have  been  seen  at  a  great  disadvantage  in  spite  of 
the  skill  shown  by  Phidias  in  adapting  it  to  its  site  ;  for,  as  the  frieze  stood  thir- 
ty-nine feet  from  the  floor,  and  as  the  width  of  the  portico  between  the  wall  and 
the  columns  was  only  nine  feet,  it  was  seen  at  a  very  sharp  angle,  and  owing  to 
the  projection  of  the  roof  beyond  the  wall  of  the  temple  the  frieze  received  only 
reflected  light  from  the  marble  pavement  below. 

Apart  from  the  marble  sculptures  on  the  exterior  of  the  Parthenon,  the  two 
most  famous  works  of  Phidias  were  the  statues  of  Athena,  made  for  the  inte- 
rior of  the  Parthenon,  and  of  Zeus  for  the  temple  of  the  god  at  Olvmpia  in  Elis. 
Both  these  statues  were  of  the  sort  called  Chryselephantine,  from  the  Greek  chroti- 
sons,  golden,  and  clephantiuos,  of  ivory  ;  that  is,  they  were  constructed  of  plates 
of  gold  and  ivory,  laid  upon  a  core  of  wood  or  stone.  The  style  was  not  new, 
though  its  invention  was  at  one  time  ascribed  to  Phidias.  It  came  from  the 
East,  but  it  was  now  employed  for  the  first  time  in  Greece  in  a  work  of  national 
importance. 

In  the  Athena,  the  face,  neck,  arms,  hands,  and  feet  were  made  of  ivory,  and  the 


208  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

drapery  and  ornaments,  the  helmet,  the  shield,  and  the  sandals  of  gold,  which  as  in 
the  case  of  the  statue  made  for  Platnea,  was  removable  at  pleasure.  The  height  of 
the  statue,  including  the  pedestal,  was  nearly  forty  feet.  The  goddess  stood  erect, 
clothed  with  a  tunic  reaching  to  the  ankles,  and  showing  her  richly  sandalled  feet. 
She  had  the  legis  on  her  breast,  her  head  was  covered  with  a  helmet,  and  her  shield, 
richly  embossed  with  the  Battle  of  the  Amazons,  rested  on  the  ground  at  her  side. 
In  one  hand  she  held  a  spear,  and  in  the  other,  an  image  of  Victory  six  feet  high. 

A  still  more  splendid  work,  and  one  which  raised  the  fame  of  Phidias  to  the 
highest  point,  was  the  statue  of  the  Olympian  Zeus,  made  for  the  Eleans.  In 
this  statue,  Phidias  essayed  to  embody  the  Homeric  ideal  of  the  supreme  divinity 
of  the  people  of  Greece  sitting  on  his  throne  as  a  monarch,  and  in  an  attitude  of 
majestic  repose.  The  throne,  made  of  cedar-wood,  was  covered  with  plates  of 
gold,  and  enriched  with  ivory,  ebony,  and  precious  stones.  It  rested  on  a  plat- 
form twelve  feet  high,  made  of  costly  marble  and  carved  with  the  images  of  the 
gods  who  formed  the  council  of  Zeus  on  Olympus.  The  feet  of  the  god  rested  on 
a  footstool  supported  by  lions,  and  with  the  combat  of  Theseus  and  the  Amazons 
in  a  bas-relief  on  the  front  and  sides.  In  one  hand  Zeus  held  the  sceptre,  and  in 
the  other  a  winged  Victory.  His  head  was  crowned  with  a  laurel  wreath  ;  his 
mantle,  falling  from  one  shoulder,  left  his  breast  bare  and  covered  the  lower  part 
of  his  person  with  its  ample  folds  of  pure  gold  enamelled  with  flowers.  The 
whole  height  of  the  statue  with  the  pedestal  was  about  fifty  feet ;  by  its  very 
disproportion  to  the  size  of  the  temple  it  was  made  to  appear  still  larger  than  it 
really  was.  This  statue  was  reckoned  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  world.  In  it 
the  Greeks  seemed  to  behold  Zeus  face  to  face.  To  see  it  was  a  cure  for  all 
earthly  woes,  and  to  die  without  having  seen  it  was  reckoned  a  great  calamity. 

The  downfall  of  Pericles,  due  to  the  jealousies  of  his  rivals,  carried  with  it  the 
ruin  of  Phidias,  his  close  friend,  to  whom  he  had  entrusted  such  great  undertak- 
ings. An  indictment  was  brought  against  the  sculptor,  charging  him  with  appro- 
priating to  himself  a  portion  of  the  gold  given  him  for  the  adornment  of  the 
statue  of  Athena  ;  and  according  to  some  authorities  Pericles  himself  was  included 
in  the  charge.  The  gold  had,  however,  been  attached  to  the  statue  in  such  a 
manner  that  it  could  be  taken  off  and  weighed,  and  in  the  proof,  the  charge  had 
to  be  abandoned.  But  Phidias  did  not  escape  so  easily.  He  was  accused  of  sac- 
rilege in  having  Introduced  portraits  of  himself  and  Pericles  on  the  shield  of  the 
goddess,  where,  says  Plutarch,  in  the  bas-relief  of  the  Battle  of  the  Amazons,  he 
carved  his  own  portrait  as  a  bald  old  man  lifting  a  stone  with  both  hands,  and 
also  introduced  an  excellent  likeness  of  Pericles  fighting  with  an  Amazon. 

Phidias  died  in  prison  before  the  trial  came  off,  and  his  name  must  be  added 
to  the  long  list  of  those  whom  an  ungrateful  world  has  rewarded  for  their  services 
with  ignominy  and  death. 


(^^^^^-v-:/<. 


r 


LEONARDO    DA   VINCI 


209 


LEONARDO  DA   VINCI 

By   Anna  Jameson 
(1452-1519) 


L" 


EONARDO  DA  ViNci  seems  to  present  in  his 
own  person  a  rdszimd  of  all  the  characteristics 
of  the  age  in  which  he  lived.  He  was  the  miracle 
of  that  age  of  miracles.  Ardent  and  versatile  as 
youth  ;  patient  and  persevering  as  age  ;  a  most 
profound  and  original  thinker ;  the  greatest  math- 
ematician and  most  ingenious  mechanic  of  his 
time  ;  architect,  chemist,  engineer,  musician,  poet, 
painter — we  are  not  only  astounded  by  the  vari- 
ety of  his  natural  gifts  and  acquired  knowledge, 
but  by  the  practical  direction  of  his  amazing 
powers.  The  extracts  which  have  been  pub- 
lished from  MSS.  now  existing  in  his  own  hand- 
writing show  him  to  have  anticipated  by  the  force 
of  his  own  intellect  some  of  the  greatest  discover- 
ies made  since  his  time.  "  These  fragments,"  says 
Mr.  Hallam,  "are,  according  to  our  common  es- 
timate of  the  age  in  which  he  lived,  more  like  revelations  of  physical  truths 
vouchsafed  to  a  single  mind  than  the  superstructure  of  its  reasoning  upon  any 
established  basis.  The  discoveries  which  made  Galileo,  Kepler,  Castelli,  and 
other  names  illustrious  ;  the  system  of  Copernicus,  the  very  theories  of  recent 
geologists,  are  anticipated  by  Da  Vinci  within  the  compass  of  a  few  pages,  not 
perhaps  in  the  most  precise  language,  or  on  the  most  conclusive  reasoning,  but 
so  as  to  strike  us  with  something  like  the  awe  of  preternatural  knowledge.  In 
an  age  of  so  much  dogmatism  he  first  laid  down  the  grand  principle  of  Bacon, 
that  experiment  and  observation  must  be  the  guides  to  just  theory  in  -the  investi- 
gation of  nature.  If  any  doubt  could  be  harbored,  not  as  to  the  right  of  Leo- 
nardo da  Vinci  to  stand  as  the  first  name  of  the  fifteenth  century,  which  is  beyond 
all  doubt,  but  as  to  his  originality  in  so  many  discoveries,  which  probably  no  one 
man,  especially  in  such  circumstances,  has  ever  made,  it  must  be  by  an  hypothe- 
sis not  very  untenable,  that  some  parts  of  physical  science  had  already  attained  a 
height  which  mere  books  do  not  record." 

It  seems  at  first  sight  almost  incomprehensible  that,  thus  endowed  as  a  phi- 
losopher, mechanic,  inventor,  discoverer,  the  fame  of  Leonardo  should  now  rest 
on  the  works  he  has  left  as  a  painter.  We  cannot,  within  these  limits,  attempt 
to  explain  why  and  how  it  is  that  as  the  man  of  science  he  has  been  naturally  and 
necessarily  left  behind  by  the  onward  march  of  intellectual  progress,  while  as  the 

14 


210  ARTISTS    AND   AUTHORS 

poet-painter  he  still  survives  as  a  presence  and  a  power.  We  must  proceed  at 
once  to  give  some  account  of  him  in  the  character  in  which  he  exists  to  us  and 
for  us — that  of  the  great  artist. 

Leonardo  was  born  at  Vinci,  near  Florence,  in  the  Lower  Val  d'Arno,  on  the 
borders  of  the  territory  of  Pistoia.  His  father,  Piero  da  Vinci,  was  an  advocate 
of  Florence — not  rich,  but  in  independent  circumstances,  and  possessed  of  estates 
in  land.  The  singular  talents  of  his  son  induced  Piero  to  give  him,  from  an 
early  age,  the  advantage  of  the  best  instructors.  As  a  child  he  distinguished 
himself  by  his  proficiency  in  arithmetic  and  mathematics.  Music  he  studied 
early,  as  a  science  as  well  as  an  art.  He  invented  a  species  of  lyre  for  himself, 
and  sung  his  own  poetical  compositions  to  his  own  music,  both  being  frequently 
extemporaneous.  But  his  favorite  pursuit  was  the  art  of  design  in  all  its 
branches ;  he  modelled  in  clay  or  wax,  or  attempted  to  draw  every  object  which 
struck  his  fancy.  His  father  sent  him  to  study  under  Andrea  Verrocchio, 
famous  as  a  sculptor,  chaser  in  metal,  and  painter.  Andrea,  who  was  an  excel- 
lent and  correct  designer,  but  a  bad  and  hard  colorist,  was  soon  after  engaged  to 
paint  a  picture  of  the  baptism  of  our  Saviour.  He  employed  Leonardo,  then  a 
youth,  to  execute  one  of  the  angels  ;  this  he  did  with  so  much  softness  and 
richness  of  color,  that  it  far  surpassed  the  rest  of  the  picture  ;  and  Verrocchio 
from  that  time  threw  away  his  palette,  and  confined  himself  wholly  to  his  works 
in  sculpture  and  design,  "  enraged,"  says  Vessari,  "  that  a  child  should  thus  excel 
him." 

The  youth  of  Leonardo  thus  passed  away  in  the  pursuit  of  science  and  of  art  ; 
sometimes  he  was  deeply  engaged  in  astronomical  calculations  and  investigations  ; 
sometimes  ardent  in  the  study  of  natural  history,  botany,  and  anatomy  ;  some- 
times intent  on  new  effects  of  color,  light,  shadow,  or  expression  in  representing 
objects  animate  or  inanimate.  Versatile,  yet  persevering,  he  varied  his  pursuits, 
but  he  never  abandoned  any.  He  was  quite  a  young  man  when  he  conceived 
and  demonstrated  the  practicability  of  two  magnificent  projects  :  one  was  to  lift 
the  whole  of  the  church  of  San  Giovanni,  by  means  of  immense  levers,  some  feet 
higher  than  it  now  stands,  and  thus  supply  the  deficient  elevation  ;  the  other 
project  was  to  form  the  Arno  into  a  navigable  canal  as  far  as  Pisa,  which  would 
have  added  _greatly  to  the  commercial  advantages  of  Florence. 

It  happened  about  this  time  that  a  peasant  on  the  estate  of  Piero  da  Vinci 
brought  him  a  circular  piece  of  wood,  cut  horizontally  from  the  trunk  of  a  very 
large  old  fig-tree,  which  had  been  lately  felled,  and  begged  to  have  something 
painted  on  it  as  an  ornament  for  his  cottage.  The  man  being  an  especial  favorite, 
Piero  desired  his  son  Leonardo  to  gratify  his  request ;  and  Leonardo,  inspired  by 
that  wildness  of  fancy  which  was  one  of  his  characteristics,  took  the  panel  into 
his  own  room,  and  resolved  to  astonish  his  father  by  a  most  unlooked-for  proof 
of  his  art.  He  determined  to  compose  something  which  should  have  an  effect 
similar  to  that  of  the  Medusa  on  the  shield  of  Perseus,  and  almost  petrify  behold- 
ers. Aided  by  his  recent  studies  in  natural  history,  he  collected  together  from 
the  neighboring  swamps  and  the  river-mud  all  kinds  of  hideous  reptiles,  as  ad- 


LEONARDO    DA   VINCI  211 

ders,  lizards,  toads,  serpents  ;  insects,  as  moths,  locusts,  and  other  crawling  and 
flying  obscene  and  obnoxious  things  ;  and  out  of  these  he  composed  a  sort  of 
monster  or  chimera,  which  he  represented  as  about  to  issue  from  the  shield,  with 
eyes  flashing  fire,  and  of  an  aspect  so  fearful  and  abominable  that  it  seemed  to  in- 
fect the  very  air  around.  When  finished,  he  led  his  father  into  the  room  in  which 
it  was  placed,  and  the  terror  and  horror  of  Piero  proved  the  success  of  his  attempt. 
This  production,  afterward  known  as  the  "  Rotello  del  Fico,"  from  the  material  on 
which  it  was  painted,  was  sold  by  Piero  secretly  for  one  hundred  ducats  to  a  mer- 
chant, who  carried  it  to  Milan,  and  sold  it  to  the  duke  for  three  hundred.  To 
the  poor  peasant,  thus  cheated  of  his  "  Rotello,"  Piero  gave  a  wooden  shield,  on 
which  was  painted  a  heart  transfixed  by  a  dart,  a  device  better  suited  to  his 
taste  and  comprehension.  In  the  subsequent  troubles  of  Milan,  Leonardo's  pict- 
ure disappeared,  and  was  probably  destroyed  as  an  object  of  horror  by  those  who 
did  not  understand  its  value  as  a  work  of  art. 

During  this  first  period  of  his  life,  which  was  wholly  passed  in  Florence  and 
its  neighborhood,  Leonardo  painted  several  other  pictures  of  a  very  different  char- 
acter, and  designed  some  beautiful  cartoons  of  sacred  and  mythological  subjects, 
which  showed  that  his  sense  of  the  beautiful,  the  elevated,  and  the  graceful  was 
not  less  a  part  of  his  mind  than  that  eccentricity  and  almost  perversion  of  fancy 
which  made  him  delight  in  sketching  ugly,  exaggerated  caricatures,  and  repre- 
senting the  deformed  and  the  terrible. 

Leonardo  da  Vinci  was  now  about  thirty  years  old,  in  the  prime  of  his  life 
and  talents.  His  taste  for  pleasure  and  expense  was,  however,  equal  to  his  genius 
and  indefatigable  industry  ;  and  anxious  to  secure  a  certain  provision  for  the  fut- 
ure, as  well  as  a  wider  field  for  the  exercise  of  his  various  talents,  he  accepted  the 
invitation  of  Ludovico  Sforza  il  Moro,  then  regent,  afterward  Duke  of  Milan, 
to  reside  in  his  court,  and  to  execute  a  colossal  equestrian  statue  of  his  ancestor, 
Francesco  Sforza.  Here  begins  the  second  period  of  his  artistic  career,  which 
includes  his  sojourn  at  Milan,  that  is  from  1483  to  1499. 

Vasari  says  that  Leonardo  was  invited  to  the  court  of  Milan  for  the  Duke 
Ludovico's  amusement,  "as  a  musician  and  performer  on  the  lyre,  and  as  the 
greatest  singer  and  improvisatorc  of  his  time  ; "  but  this  is  improbable.  Leonardo, 
in  his  long  letter  to  that  prince,  in  which  he  recites  his  own  qualifications  for 
employment,  dwells  chiefly  on  his  skill  in  engineering  and  fortification  ;  and 
sums  up  his  pretensions  as  an  artist  in  these  few  brief  words  :  "  I  understand  the 
different  modes  of  sculpture  in  marble,  bronze,  and  terra-cotta.  In  painting, 
also,  I  may  esteem  myself  equal  to  anyone,  let  him  be  who  he  may."  Of  his 
musical  talents  he  makes  no  mention  whatever,  though  undoubtedly  these,  as 
well  as  his  other  social  accomplishments,  his  handsome  person,  his  winning  ad- 
dress, his  wit  and  eloquence,  recommended  him  to  the  notice  of  the  prince,  by 
whom  he  was  greatly  beloved,  and  in  whose  service  he  remained  for  about  seven- 
teen years.  It  is  not  necessary,  nor  would  it  be  possible  here,  to  give  a  particu- 
lar account  of  all  the  works  in  which  Leonardo  was  engaged  for  his  patron,  nor 
of  the  great  political  events  in  which  he  was  involved,  more  by  his  position  than 


21-2  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

by  his  inclination  ;  for  instance,  the  invasion  of  Italy  by  Charles  VIII.  of  France, 
and  the  subsequent  invasion  of  Milan  by  Louis  XII.,  which  ended  in  the  de- 
struction of  the  Duke  Ludovico.  The  greatest  work  of  all,  and  by  far  the 
grandest  picture  which,  up  to  that  time,  had  been  executed  in  Italy,  was  the 
"  Last  Supper,"  painted  on  the  wall  of  the  refectory,  or  dining-room,  of  the 
Dominican  convent  of  the  Madonna  delle  Grazie.  It  occupied  Leonardo  about 
two  years,  from  1496  to  1498. 

The  moment  selected  by  the  painter  is  described  in  the  26th  chapter  of  St. 
Matthew,  21st  and  22d  verses  :  "  And  as  they  did  eat,  he  said,  Verily,  I  say  unto 
you,  that  one  of  you  shall  betray  me :  and  they  were  exceeding  sorrowful,  and 
began  every  one  of  them  to  say  unto  him.  Lord,  is  it  I  ?  "  The  knowledge  of 
character  displayed  in  the  heads  of  the  different  apostles  is  even  more  wonderful 
than  the  skilful  arrangement  of  the  figures  and  the  amazing  beauty  of  the  work- 
manship. The  space  occupied  by  the  picture  is  a  wall  twenty-eight  feet  in  length, 
and  the  figures  are  larger  than  life. 

Of  this  magnificent  creation  of  art,  only  the  mouldering  remains  are  now  vis- 
ible. It  has  been  so  often  repaired  that  almost  every  vestige  of  the  original 
painting  is  annihilated  ;  but  from  the  multiplicity  of  descriptions,  engravings,  and 
copies  that  exist,  no  picture  is  more  universally  known  and  celebrated.  Perhaps 
the  best  judgment  we  can  now  form  of  its  merits  is  from  the  fine  copy  executed 
by  one  of  Leonardo's  best  pupils,  Marco  Uggione,  for  the  Certosa  at  Pavia,  and 
now  in  London,  in  the  collection  of  the  Royal  Academy.  Eleven  other  copies, 
by  various  pupils  of  Leonardo,  painted  either  during  his  lifetime  or  within  a  few 
years  after  his  death,  while  the  picture  was  in  perfect  preservation,  exist  in  differ- 
ent churches  and  collections. 

While  engaged  on  the  Cenacolo,  Leonardo  painted  the  portrait  of  Lucrezia 
Crivelli,  now  in  the  Louvre  (No.  483).  It  has  been  engraved  under  the  title  of 
La  Belle  Ferronniere,  but  later  researches  leave  us  no  doubt  that  it  represents 
Lucrezia  Crivelli,  a  beautiful  favorite  of  Ludovico  Sforza,  and  was  painted  at 
Milan  in  1497.  It  is,  as  a  work  of  art,  of  such  extraordinary  perfection  that  all 
critical  admiration  is  lost  in  wonder. 

Of  the  grand  equestrian  statue  of  Francesco  Sforza,  Leonardo  never  finished 
more  than  the  model  in  clay,  which  was  considered  a  masterpiece.  Some  years 
afterward  (in  1499),  when  Milan  was  invaded  by  the  French,  it  was  used  as  a 
target  by  the  Gascon  bowmen,  and  completely  destroyed.  The  profound  ana- 
tomical studies  which  Leonardo  made  for  this  work  still  exist. 

In  the  year  1500,  the  French  being  in  possession  of  Milan,  his  patron  Ludo- 
vico in  captivity,  and  the  affairs  of  the  state  in  utter  confusion,  Leonardo  re- 
turned to  his  native  Florence,  where  he  hoped  to  re-establish  his  broken  fortunes, 
and  to  find  employment.  Here  begins  the  third  period  of  his  artistic  life,  from 
1500  to  15 13,  that  is,  from  his  forty-eighth  to  his  sixtieth  year.  He  found  the 
Medici  family  in  exile,  but  was  received  by  Pietro  Soderini  (who  governed  the 
city  as  "  Gonfaloni&re  perpetuo ")  with  great  distinction,  and  a  pension  was  as- 
signed to  him  as  painter  in  the  service  of  the  republic.     One  of  his  first  works 


Q 
O 


O 

Q 
O 


I 

Q. 


LEONARDO    DA   VINCI  213 

after  his  return  to  Florence  was  the  famous  portrait  of  Madonna  Lisa  del  Gio- 
condo,  called  in  French  La  Jocondc,  and  now  in  the  Louvre  (484),  which  after 
the  death  of  Leonardo  was  purchased  by  Francis  I.  for  4,000  gold  crowns,  equal 
to  45,000  francs  or  ^1,800,  an  enormous  sum  in  those  days  ;  yet  who  ever  thought 
it  too  much  ? 

Then  began  the  rivalry  between  Leonardo  and  Michael  Angelo,  which  lasted 
during  the  remainder  of  Leonardo's  life.  The  difference  of  age  (for  Michael 
Angelo  was  twenty-two  years  younger)  ought  to  have  prevented  all  unseemly 
jealousy;  but  Michael  Angelo  was  haughty  and  impatient  of  all  supeiiority,  or 
even  equality  ;  Leonardo,  sensitive,  capricious,  and  naturally  disinclined  to  admit 
the  pretensions  of  a  rival,  to  whom  he  could  say,  and  did  say,  "  I  was  famous  be- 
fore you  were  born  !  "  With  all  their  admiration  of  each  other's  genius,  their 
mutual  frailties  prevented  any  real  good-will  on  either  side. 

Leonardo,  during  his  stay  at  Florence,  painted  the  portrait  of  Ginevra  Benci, 
the  reigning  beauty  of  her  time.  We  find  that  in  1502  he  was  engaged  by  Cae- 
sar Borgia  to  visit  and  report  on  the  fortifications  of  his  territories,  and  in  this 
office  he  was  employed  for  two  years.  In  1503  he  formed  a  plan  for  turning 
the  course  of  the  Arno,  and  in  the  following  year  he  lost  his  father.  In  1505  he 
modelled  the  group  which  we  now  see  over  the  northern  door  of  the  San  Gio- 
vanni, at  Florence.  In  1514  he  was  invited  to  Rome  by  Leo  X.,  but  more  in 
his  character  of  philosopher,  mechanic,  and  alchemist,  than  as  a  painter.  Here 
Raphael  was  at  the  height  of  his  fame,  and  engaged  in  his  greatest  works,  the 
frescos  of  the  Vatican.  The  younger  artist  was  introduced  to  the  elder  ;  and 
two  pictures  which  Leonardo  painted  while  at  Rome — the  "  Madonna  of  St.  Ono- 
frio,"  and  the  "  Holy  Family,"  painted  for  Filiberta  of  Savoy,  the  pope's  sister- 
in-law  (which  is  now  at  St.  Petersburg) — show  that  even  this  veteran  in  art  felt 
the  irresistible  influence  of  the  genius  of  his  young  rival.  They  are  both  Raffael- 
esqtie  in  the  .subject  and  treatment. 

It  appears  that  Leonardo  was  ill-satisfied  with  his  sojourn  at  Rome.  He  had 
long  been  accustomed  to  hold  the  first  rank  as  an  artist  wherever  he  resided  ; 
whereas  at  Rome  he  found  himself  only  one  among  many  who,  if  they  acknowl- 
edged his  greatness,  affected  to  consider  his  day  as  past.  He  was  conscious  that 
many  of  the  improvements  in  the  arts  which  were  now  brought  into  use,  and 
which  enal)led  the  painters  of  the  day  to  produce  such  extraordinary  effects,  were 
invented  or  introduced  by  himself.  If  he  could  no  longer  assert  that  measureless 
superiority  over  all  others  which  he  had  done  in  his  younger  days,  it  was  because 
he  himself  had  opened  to  them  new  paths  to  excellence.  The  arrival  of  his  old 
competitor,  Michael  Angelo,  and  some  slight  on  the  part  of  Leo  X.,  who  was  an- 
noyed by  his  speculative  and  dilatory  habits  in  executing  the  works  intrusted  to 
him,  all  added  to  his  irritation  and  disgust.  He  left  Rome,  and  set  out  for  Pa- 
via,  where  the  French  king,  Francis  I.,  then  held  his  court.  He  was  received  by 
the  young  monarch  with  every  mark  of  respect,  loaded  with  favors,  and  a  pension 
of  700  gold  crowns  settled  on  him  for  life.  At  the  famous  conference  between 
Francis  I.  and  Leo  X.,  at  Bologna,  Leonardo  attended  his  new  patron,  and  was 


214 


ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 


of  essential  service  to  him  on  that  occasion.  In  the  following  3'ear,  15 16,  he  re- 
turned with  Francis  I.  to  France,  and  was  attached  to  the  French  court  as  princi- 
pal painter.  It  appears,  however,  that  during  his  residence  in  France  he  did  not 
paint  a  single  picture.  His  health  had  begun  to  decline  from  the  time  he  left 
Italy ;  and  feeling  his  end  approach,  he  prepared  himself  for  it  by  religious  med- 
itation, by  acts  of  charity,  and  by  a  most  conscientious  distribution  by  will  of  all 
his  worldly  possessions  to  his  relatives  and  friends.  At  length,  after  protracted 
suffering,  this  great  and  most  extraordinary  man  died  at  Cloux,  near  Amboise, 
May  2,  1 5 19,  being  then  in  his  sixty-seventh  year.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  we 
cannot  wholly  credit  the  beautiful  story  of  his  dying  in  the  arms  of  Francis  I., 
who,  as  it  is  said,  had  come  to  visit  him  on  his  death-bed.  It  would  indeed  have 
been,  as  Fuseli  expressed  it,  "an  honor  to  the  king,  by  which  destiny  would  have 
atoned  to  that  monarch  fc5r  his  future  disaster  at  Pavia." 


MICHAEL  ANGELO 

By   Anna  Jameson 
(1474-1564) 


w 


'E  have  spoken  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  Michael 
Angelo,  the  other  great  luminary  of  art,  was 
twenty-two  years  younger,  but  the  more  severe  and 
reflective  cast  of  his  mind  rendered  their  difference  of 
age  far  less  in  effect  than  in  reality.  It  is  usual  to 
compare  Michael  Angelo  with  Raphael,  but  he  is 
more  aptly  compared  with  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  All 
the  great  artists  of  that  time,  even  Raphael  himself, 
were  influenced  more  or  less  by  these  two  extraordi- 
nary men,  but  they  exercised  no  influence  on  each 
other.  They  started  from  opposite  points ;  they  pur- 
sued throughout  their  whole  existence,  and  in  all  they 
planned  and  achieved,  a  course  as  different  as  their  re- 
spective characters. 

Michael  Angelo  Buonarroti  was  born  at  Setigna- 
no,  near  Florence,  in  the  year  1474.  He  was  descended  from  a  family  once  no- 
ble— even  among  the  noblest  of  the  feudal  lords  of  Northern  Italy — the  Counts 
of  Canossa  ;  but  that  branch  of  it  represented  by  his  father,  Luigi  Leonardo 
Buonarroti  Simoni,  had  for  some  generations  become  poorer  and  poorer,  until 
the  last  descendant  was  thankful  to  accept  an  office  in  the  law,  and  had  been 
nominated  magistrate  or  mayor  {Podesta)  of  Chiusi.  In  this  situation  he  had 
limited  his  ambition  to  the  prospect  of  seeing  his  eldest  son  a  notary  or  advocate 


MICHAEL   ANGELO  215 

in  his  native  city.  The  young  Michael  Angelo  showed  the  utmost  distaste  for 
the  studies  allotted  to  him,  and  was  continually  escaping  from  his  home  and  from 
his  desk  to  haunt  the  ateliers  of  the  painters,  particularly  that  of  Ghirlandajo, 
who  was  then  at  the  height  of  his  reputation. 

The  father  of  Michael  Angelo,  who  found  his  family  increase  too  rapidly  for 
his  means,  had  destined  some  of  his  sons  for  commerce  (it  will  be  recollected 
that  in  Genoa  and  Florence  the  most  powerful  nobles  were  merchants  or  manu- 
facturers), and  others  for  civil  or  diplomatic  employments  ;  but  the  fine  arts,  as 
being  at  that  time  productive  of  little  honor  or  emolument,  he  held  in  no  esteem, 
and  treated  these  tastes  of  his  eldest  son  sometimes  with  contempt  and  sometimes 
even  with  harshness.  Michael  Angelo,  however,  had  formed  some  friendships 
among  the  young  painters,  and  particularly  with  Francesco  Granacci,  one  of  the 
best  pupils  of  Ghirlandajo  ;  he  contrived  to  borrow  models  and  drawings,  and 
studied  them  in  secret  with  such  persevering  assiduity  and  consequent  improve- 
ment, that  Ghirlandajo,  captivated  by  his  genius,  undertook  to  plead  his  cause  to 
his  father,  and  at  length  prevailed  over  the  old  man's  family  pride  and  prejudices. 
At  the  age  of  fourteen  Michael  Angelo  was  received  into  the  studio  of  Ghir- 
landajo as  a  regular  pupil,  and  bound  to  him  for  three  vears ;  and  such  was  the 
precocious  talent  of  the  boy,  that,  instead  of  being  paid  for  his  instruction,  Ghir- 
landajo undertook  to  pay  the  father,  Leonardo  Buonarroti,  for  the  first,  second, 
and  third  years,  six,  eight,  and  twelve  golden  florins,  as  payment  for  the  advan- 
tage he  expected  to  derive  from  the  labor  of  the  son.  Thus  was  the  vocation  of 
the  young  artist  decided  for  life. 

At  that  time  Lorenzo  the  Magnificent  reigned  over  Florence.  He  had 
formed  in  his  palace  and  gardens  a  collection  of  antique  marbles,  busts,  statues, 
fragments,  which  he  had  converted  into  an  academy  for  the  use  of  young  artists, 
placing  at  the  head  of  it  as  director  a  sculptor  of  some  eminence,  named  Bertoldo. 
Michael  Angelo  v/as  one  of  the  first  who,  through  the  recommendation  of  Ghir- 
landajo, was  received  into  this  new  academy,  afterward  so  famous  and  so  memo- 
rable in  the  history  of  art.  The  young  man,  then  not  quite  sixteen,  had  hitherto 
occupied  himself  chiefly  in  drawing ;  but  now,  fired  by  the  beauties  he  beheld 
around  him,  and  by  the  example  and  success  of  a  fellow-pupil,  Torregiano,  he  set 
himself  to  model  in  clay,  and  at  length  to  copy  in  marble  what  was  before  him  ; 
but,  as  was  natural  in  a  character  and  genius  so  steeped  in  individuality,  his  copies 
became  not  so  much  imitations  of  form  as  original  embodyings  of  the  leading 
idea.  For  example  :  his  finst  attempt  in  marble,  when  he  was  about  fifteen,  was 
a  copy  of  an  antique  mask  of  an  old  laughing  Faun  ;  he  treated  this  in  a  manner 
so  different  from  the  original,  and  so  spirited  as  to  excite  the  astonishment  of 
Lorenzo  de  Medici,  who  criticised  it,  however,  saying,  "  Thou  shouldst  have  re- 
membered that  old  folks  do  not  retain  all  their  teeth  ;  some  of  them  are  always 
wanting."  The  boy  struck  the  teeth  out,  giving  it  at  once  the  most  grotesque 
expression  ;  and  Lorenzo,  infinitely  amused,  sent  for  his  father  and  offered  to  at- 
tach his  son  to  his  own  particular  service,  and  to  undertake  the  entire  care  of  his 
education.     The  father  consented,  on  condition  of  receiving  for  himself  an  office 


216  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

under  the  government,  and  thenceforth  Michael  Angelo  was  lodged  in  the  palace 
of  the  Medici  and  treated  by  Lorenzo  as  his  son. 

Michael  Angelo  continued  his  studies  under  the  auspices  of  Lorenzo  ;  but 
just  as  he  had  reached  his  eighteenth  year  he  lost  his  generous  patron,  his  second 
father,  and  was  thenceforth  thrown  on  his  own  resources.  It  is  true  that  the  son 
of  Lorenzo,  Piero  de  Medici,  continued  to  extend  his  favor  to  the  young  artist, 
but  with  so  little  comprehension  of  his  genius  and  character,  that  on  one  occasion, 
during  the  severe  winter  of  1494,  he  set  him  to  form  a  statue  of  snow  for  the 
amusement  of  his  guests. 

Michael  Angelo,  while  he  yielded,  perforce,  to  the  caprices  of  his  protector, 
turned  the  energies  of  his  mind  to  a  new  study — that  of  anatomy — and  pursued 
it  with  all  that  fervor  which  belonged  to  his  character.  His  attention  was  at  the 
same  time  directed  to  literature,  by  the  counsels  and  conversations  of  a  very  cele- 
brated scholar  and  poet  then  residing  in  the  court  of  Piero — Angelo  Poliziano  ; 
and  he  pursued  at  the  same  time  the  cultivation  of  his  mind  and  the  practice  of 
his  art.  Engrossed  by  his  own  studies,  he  was  scarcely  aware  of  what  was  passing 
around  him,  nor  of  the  popular  intrigues  which  were  preparing  the  ruin  of  the 
Medici ;  suddenly  this  powerful  family  were  flung  from  sovereignty  to  tempora- 
ry disgrace  and  exile  ;  and  Michael  Angelo,  as  one  of  their  retainers,  was  obliged 
to  fly  from  Florence,  and  took  refuge  in  the  city  of  Bologna.  During  the  year 
he  spent  there  he  found  a  friend,  who  employed  him  on  some  works  of  sculpture  ; 
and  on  his  return  to  Florence  he  executed  a  Cupid  in  marble,  of  such  beauty 
that  it  found  its  way  into  the  cabinet  of  the  Duchess  of  Mantua  as  a  real  an- 
tique. On  the  discovery  that  the  author  of  this  beautiful  statue  was  a  young  man 
of  two-and-twenty,  the  Cardinal  San  Giorgio  invited  him  to  Rome,  and  for  some 
time  lodged  him  in  his  palace.  Here  Michael  Angelo,  surrounded  and  inspired 
by  the  grand  remains  of  antiquity,  pursued  his  studies  with  unceasing  energy  ;  he 
produced  a  statue  of  Bacchus,  which  added  to  his  reputation  ;  and  in  1500,  at  the 
age  of  five-and-twenty,  he  produced  the  famous  group  of  the  dead  Christ  on  the 
knees  of  his  Virgin  Mother  (called  the  "  Pieta"),  which  is  now  in  the  church  of 
St.  Peter's,  at  Rome  ;  this  last  being  frequently  copied  and  imitated,  obtained  him 
so  much  applause  and  reputation,  that  he  was  recalled  to  Florence,  to  undertake 
several  public  works,  and  we  find  him  once  more  established  in  his  native  city  in 
the  year  1502. 

In  1506  Michael  Angelo  was  summoned  to  Rome  by  Pope  Julius  II.,  who, 
while  living,  had  conceived  the  idea  of  erecting  a  most  splendid  monument  to 
perpetuate  his  memory.  For  this  work,  which  was  never  completed,  Michael 
Angelo  executed  the  famous  statue  of  Moses,  seated,  grasping  his  flowing  beard 
with  one  hand,  and  with  the  other  sustaining  the  tables  of  the  Law.  While  em- 
ployed on  this  tomb,  the  pope  commanded  him  to  undertake  also  the  decoration 
of  the  ceiling  of  the  Sistine  Chapel.  Pope  Sixtus  IV.  had,  in  the  year  1473, 
erected  this  famous  chapel,  and  summoned  the  best  painters  of  that  time,  Signor- 
elli,  Cosimo  Roselli,  Perugino,  and  Ghirlandajo,  to  decorate  the  interior ;  but 
down  to  the  year  1508  the  ceiling  remained  without  any  ornament ;  and  Michael 


MICHAEL   ANGELO  217 

Angelo  was  called  upon  to  cover  this  enormous  vault,  a  space  of  one  hundred 
and  fifty  feet  in  length  by  fifty  in  breadth,  with  a  series  of  subjects  representing 
the  most  important  events  connected,  either  literally  or  typically,  with  the  fall 
and  redemption  of  mankind. 

No  part  of  Michael  Angelo's  long  life  is  so  interesting,  so  full  of  character- 
istic incident,  as  the  history  of  his  intercourse  with  Pope  Julius  II.,  which  began 
in  1505,  and  ended  only  with  the  death  of  the  pope  in  15 13. 

Michael  Angelo  had  at  all  times  a  lofty  idea  of  his  own  dignity  as  an  artist, 
and  never  would  stoop  either  to  flatter  a  patron  or  to  conciliate  a  rival.  Julius 
XL,  though  now  seventy-four,  was  as  impatient  of  contradiction  as  fiery  in  tem- 
per, as  full  of  magnificent  and  ambitious  projects  as  if  he  had  been  in  the  prime 
of  life  ;  in  his  service  was  the  famous  architect,  Bramante,  who  beheld  with  jeal- 
ousy and  alarm  the  increasing  fame  of  jVlichael  Angelo,  and  his  influence  with 
the  pontiff,  and  set  himself  by  indirect  means  to  lessen  both.  He  insinuated  to 
Julius  that  it  was  ominous  to  erect  his  own  mausoleum  during  his  lifetime,  and 
the  pope  gradually  fell  off  in  his  attentions  to  Michael  Angelo,  and  neglected  to 
supply  him  with  the  necessary  funds  for  carrying  on  the  work.  On  one  occasion, 
Michael  Angelo,  finding  it  difficult  to  obtain  access  to  the  pope,  sent  a  message 
to  him  to  this  effect,  "that  henceforth,  if  his  Holiness  desired  to  see  him,  he 
should  send  to  seek  him  elsewhere  ; "  and  the  same  night,  leaving  orders  with  his 
servants  to  dispose  of  his  property,  he  departed  for  Florence.  The  pope  de- 
spatched five  couriers  after  him  with  threats,  persuasions,  promises — but  in  vain. 
He  wrote  to  the  Gonfaloniere  Soderini,  then  at  the  head  of  the  government  of 
Florence,  commanding  him,  on  pain  of  his  extreme  displeasure,  to  send  Michael 
Angelo  back  to  him  ;  but  the  inflexible  artist  absolutely  refused ;  three  months 
were  spent  in  vain  negotiations.  Soderini,  at  length,  fearing  the  pope's  anger, 
prevailed  on  Michael  Angelo  to  return,  and  sent  with  him  his  relation.  Cardinal 
Soderini,  to  make  up  the  quarrel  between  the  high  contending  powers. 

On  his  return  to  Rome,  Michael  Angelo  wished  to  have  resumed  his  work 
on  the  mausoleum  ;  but  the  pope  had  resolved  on  the  completion  of  the  Sistine 
Chapel;  he  commanded  Michael  Angelo  to  undertake  the  decoration  of  the 
vaulted  ceiling  ;  and  the  artist  was  obliged,  though  reluctantly,  to  obey.  At  this 
time  the  frescos  which  Raphael  and  his  pupils  were  painting  in  the  chambers  of 
the  Vatican  had  excited  the  admiration  of  all  Rome.  Michael  Angelo,  who  had 
never  exercised  himself  in  the  mechanical  part  of  the  art  of  fresco,  invited  from 
Florence  several  painters  of  eminence,  to  execute  his  designs  under  his  own 
superintendence  ;  but  they  could  not  reach  the  grandeur  of  his  conceptions, 
which  became  enfeebled  under  their  hands,  and  one  morning,  in  a  mood  of  im- 
patience, he  destroyed  all  that  they  had  done,  closed  the  doors  of  the  chapel 
against  them,  and  would  not  thenceforth  admit  them  to  his  presence.  He  then 
shut  himself  up,  and  proceeded  with  incredible  perseverance  and  energy  to  ac- 
complish his  task  alone  ;  he  even  prepared  his  colors  with  his  own  hands.  He 
began  with  the  end  toward  the  door,  and  in  the  two  compartments  first  painted 
(though  not  first  in  the  series),  the  "  Deluge,"  and  the  "  Vineyard  of  Noah  ;"  he 


218  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

made  the  figures  too  numerous  and  too  small  to  produce  their  full  effect  from 
l)el()\v,  a  fault  which  he  corrected  in  those  executed  subsequently.  When  almost 
half  the  work  was  completed,  the  pope  insisted  on  viewing  what  was  done,  and 
the  astonishment  and  admiration  it  excited  rendered  him  more  and  more  eager  to 
have  the  whole  completed  at  once.  The  progress,  however,  was  not  rapid 
enough  to  suit  the  impatient  temper  of  the  pontiff.  On  one  occasion  he  de- 
manded of  the  artist  when  he  meant  to  finish  it  ;  to  which  Michael  Angelo 
replied  calmly,  "When  I  can."  "When  thou  canst!"  exclaimed  the  fiery  old 
pope,  "  thou  hast  a  mind  that  I  should  have  thee  thrown  from  the  scaffold  !  "  At 
length,  on  the  day  of  All  Saints,  15 12,  the  ceiling  was  uncovered  to  public  view. 
Michael  Angelo  had  employed  on  the  painting  only,  without  reckoning  the  time 
spent  in  preparing  the  cartoons,  twenty-two  months,  and  he  received  in  payment 
three  thousand  crowns. 

The  collection  of  engravings  after  Michael  Angelo  in  the  British  Museum  is 
very  imperfect,  but  it  contains  some  fine  old  prints  from  the  Prophets  which 
should  be  studied  by  those  who  wish  to  understand  the  true  merit  of  this  great 
master,  of  whom  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  said  that,  "to  kiss  the  hem  of  his  garment, 
to  catch  the  slightest  of  his  perfections,  would  be  glory  and  distinction  enough 
for  an  ambitious  man  !  " 

W^hen  the  Sistine  Chapel  was  completed  Michael  Angelo  was  in  his  thirty- 
nintli  year ;  fifty  years  of  a  glorious  though  troubled  career  were  still  before  him. 

Pope  Julius  II.  died  in  15 13,  and  was  succeeded  by  Leo  X.,  the  son  of  Lo- 
renzo the  Magnificent.  As  a  Florentine  and  his  father's  son,  we  might  naturally 
have  expected  that  he  would  have  gloried  in  patronizing  and  employing  Michael 
Angelo  ;  but  such  was  not  the  case.  There  was  something  in  the  stern,  unbend- 
ing character,  and  retired  and  abstemious  habits  of  Michael  Angelo,  repulsive  to 
the  temper  of  Leo,  who  preferred  the  graceful  and  amiable  Raphael,  then  in  the 
prime  of  his  life  and  genius  ;  hence  arose  the  memorable  rivalry  between  Michael 
Angelo  and  Raphael,  which  on  the  part  of  the  latter  was  merely  generous  emula- 
tion, while  it  must  be  confessed  that  something  like  scorn  mingled  with  the  feel- 
ings of  Michael  Angelo.  The  pontificate  of  Leo  X.,  an  interval  of  ten  years, 
was  the  least  productive  period  of  his  life.  In  the  year  15 19,  when  the  Signoria 
of  Florence  was  negotiating  with  Ravenna  for  the  restoration  of  the  remains  of 
Dante,  he  petitioned  the  pope  that  he  might  be  allowed  to  execute,  at  his  own 
labor  and  expense,  a  monument  to  the  "  Divine  Poet."  He  was  sent  to  Florence 
to  superintend  the  building  of  the  church  of  San  Lorenzo  and  the  completion  of 
Santa  Croce  ;  but  he  differed  with  the  pope  on  the  choice  of  the  marble,  quar- 
relled with  the  officials,  and  scarcely  anything  was  accomplished.  Clement  VII., 
another  Medici,  was  elected  pope  in  1523.  He  had  conceived  the  idea  of  conse- 
crating a  chapel  in  the  church  of  San  Lorenzo,  to  receive  the  tombs  of  his  ances- 
tors and  relations,  and  which  should  be  adorned  with  all  the  splendor  of  art. 
Michael  Angelo  planned  and  built  the  chapel,  and  for  its  interior  decoration  de- 
signed and  executed  six  of  his  greatest  works  in  sculpture. 

While  Michael  Angelo  was  engaged  in  these  works  his  progress  was  inter- 


MICHAEL   ANGELO  219 

rupted  by  events  which  threw  all  Italy  into  commotion.  Rome  was  taken  and 
sacked  by  the  Constable  de  Bourbon  in  1527.  The  Medici  were  once  more  ex- 
pelled from  Florence  ;  and  Michael  Angelo,  in  the  midst  of  these  strange  vicis-. 
situdes,  was  employed  by  the  republic  to  fortify  his  native  city  against  his  former 
patrons.  Great  as  an  engineer,  as  in  every  other  department  of  art  and  science, 
he  defended  Florence  for  nine  months.  j\t  length  the  city  was  given  up  by 
treachery,  and,  fearing  the  vengeance  of  the  conquerors,  Michael  Angelo  fled  and 
concealed  himself  ;  but  Clement  VII.  was  too  sensible  of  his  merit  to  allow  him 
to  remain  long  in  disgrace  and  exile.  He  was  pardoned,  and  continued  ever 
afterward  in  high  favor  with  the  pope,  who  employed  him  on  the  sculptures  in  the 
chapel  of  San  Lorenzo  during  the  remainder  of  his  pontificate. 

In  the  year  1531  he  had  completed  the  statues  of  "Night  and  Morning,"  and 
Clement,  who  heard  of  his  incessant  labors,  sent  him  a  brief  commanding  him, 
on  paiii  of  excommunication,  to  take  care  of  his  health,  and  not  to  accept  of  any 
other  work  but  that  which  his  Holiness  had  assigned  him. 

Clement  VII.  was  succeeded  by  Pope  Paul  III.,  of  the  Farnese  family,  in 
1534.  This  pope,  though  nearly  seventy  when  he  was  elected,  was  as  anxious  to 
immortalize  his  name  by  great  undertakings  as  any  of  his  predecessors  had  been. 
His  first  wish  was  to  complete  the  decoration  of  the  interior  of  the  Sistine 
Chapel,  left  unfinished  by  Julius  II.  and  Leo  X.  He  summoned  Michael  An- 
gelo, who  endeavored  to  excuse  himself,  pleading  other  engagements  ;  but  the 
pope  would  listen  to  no  excuses  which  interfered  with  his  sovereign  power  to 
dissolve  all  other  obligations  ;  and  thus  the  artist  found  himself,  after  an  interval 
of  twenty  years,  most  reluctantly  forced  to  abandon  sculpture  for  painting ;  and, 
as  Vasari  expresses  it,  he  consented  to  serve  Pope  Paul  only  because  he  conld 
not  do  otherwise. 

The  same  Pope  Paul  HI.  had  in  the  meantime  constructed  a  beautiful 
chapel,  which  was  called  after  his  name  the  chapel  Paolina,  and  dedicated  to  St. 
Peter  and  St.  Paul.  Michael  Angelo  was  called  upon  to  design  the  decorations. 
He  painted  on  one  side  the  "  Conversion  of  St.  Paul,"  and  on  the  other  the 
"  Crucifixion  of  St.  Peter,"  which  were  completed  in  1549.  But  these  fine  paint- 
ings— of  which  existing  old  engravings  give  a  better  idea  than  the  blackened  and 
faded  remains  of  the  original  frescos — were  from  the  first  ill-disposed  as  to  the 
locality,  and  badly  lighted,  and  at  present  they  excite  little  interest  compared 
with  the  more  famous  works  in  the  Sistine. 

With  the  frescos  in  the  Pauline  Chapel  ends  Michael  Angelo's  career  as  a 
painter.  He  had  been  appointed  chief  architect  of  St.  Peter's,  in  1547,  by  Paul 
HI.  He  was  then  in  his  seventy -second  year,  and  during  the  remainder  of  his 
life,  a  period  of  sixteen  years,  we  find  him  wholly  devoted  to  architecture.  His 
vast  and  daring  genius  finding  ample  scope  in  the  completion  of  St.  Peter's,  he 
has  left  behind  him  in  his  capacity  of  architect  yet  greater  marvels  than  he  has 
achieved  as  painter  and  sculptor.  Who  that  has  seen  the  cupola  of  St.  Peter's 
soaring  into  the  skies,  but  will  think  almost  with  awe  of  the  universal  and  ma- 
jestic intellect  of  the  man  who  reared  it  ? 


220  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

It  appears,  from  the  evidence  of  contemporary  writers,  that  in  the  last  years 
of  his  Hfe  the  acknowledged  worth  and  genius  of  Michael  Angelo,  his  wide- 
spread fame,  and  his  unblemished  integrity,  combined  with  his  venerable  age  and 
the  haughtiness  and  reserve  of  his  deportment  to  invest  him  with  a  sort  of 
princely  dignity.  It  is  recorded  that,  when  he  waited  on  Pope  Julius  III.,  to  re- 
ceive his  commands,  the  pontiff  rose  on  his  approach,  seated  him,  in  spite  of  his 
excuses,  on  his  right  hand,  and  while  a  crowd  of  cardinals,  prelates,  and  ambassa- 
dors, were  standing  round  at  humble  distance,  carried  on  the  conference  as  equal 
with  equal.  When  the  Grand  Duke  Cosmo  was  in  Rome,  in  1560,  he  visited 
Michael  Angelo,  uncovered  in  his  presence,  and  stood  with  his  hat  in  his  hand 
while  speaking  to  him  ;  but  from  the  time  when  he  made  himself  the  tyrant  of 
Florence  he  never  could  persuade  Michael  Angelo  to  visit,  even  for  a  day,  his 
native  city. 

The  arrogance  imputed  to  Michael  Angelo  seems  rather  to  have  arisen  from 
a  contempt  for  others  than  from  any  overweening  opinion  of  himself.  He  was 
too  proud  to  be  vain.  He  had  placed  his  standard  of  perfection  so  high,  that  to 
the  latest  hour  of  his  life  he  considered  himself  as  striving  after  that  ideal  excel- 
lence which  had  been  revealed  to  him,  but  to  which  he  conceived  that  others 
were  blind  or  indifferent.  In  allusion  to  his  own  imperfections,  he  made  a  draw- 
ing, since  become  famous,  which  represents  an  aged  man  in  a  go-cart,  and  under- 
neath the  words  "  Anco}'a  iinpara  "  (still  learning). 

He  continued  to  labor  unremittingly,  and  with  the  same  resolute  energy  of 
mind  and  purpose,  till  the  gradual  decay  of  his  strength  warned  him  of  his  ap- 
proaching end.  He  did  not  suffer  from  any  particular  malady,  and  his  mind  was 
strong  and  clear  to  the  last.  He  died  at  Rome,  on  February  18,  1564,  in  the 
ninetieth  year  of  his  age.  A  few  days  before  his  death  he  dictated  his  will  in 
these  few  simple  words :  "  I  bequeath  my  soul  to  God,  my  body  to  the  earth, 
and  my  possessions  to  my  nearest  relations."  His  nephew,  Leonardo  Buonar- 
roti, who  was  his  principal  heir,  by  the  orders  of  the  Grand  Duke  Cosmo  had  his 
remains  secretly  conveyed  out  of  Rome  and  brought  to  Florence  ;  they  were 
with  due  honors  deposited  in  the  church  of  Santa  Croce,  under  a  costly  monu- 
ment, on  which  we  may  see  his  noble  bust  surrounded  by  three  very  common- 
place and  ill-executed  statues,  representing  the  arts  in  which  he  excelled — Paint- 
ing, Sculpture,  and  Architecture.  They  might  have  added  Poetry,  for  Michael 
Angelo  was  so  fine  a  poet  that  his  productions  would  have  given  him  fame, 
though  he  had  never  peopled  the  Sistine  with  his  giant  creations,  nor  "suspended 
the  Pantheon  in  the  air."  The  object  to  whom  his  poems  are  chiefly  addressed, 
Vittoria  Colonna,  Marchioness  of  Pescara,  was  the  widow  of  the  celebrated  com- 
mander who  overcame  Francis  I.  at  the  battle  of  Pavia  ;  herself  a  poetess,  and 
one  of  the  most  celebrated  women  of  her  time  for  beauty,  talents,  virtue,  and 
piety.     She  died  in  1547. 


MICHAEL  ANGELO  AND  VITTORIA  COLONNA 


HERMANN  SCHNEIDER 


■  inhineri 

.■j!i.n  ii  ;.,  Id  rc- 

_  '„a  his  .,  I   .  .f  'lis 

le  a  en 

ie  distance,  cai 
uia  u   '      '     -.mo  was  lu    i\ 
_i  in  his  ,  and  stood  w 

.im  ;  but  from  the  ;  en  he  mad 

never  could  persuade  Michael  Angelo  to  visit,  ev(. 

. jgance  imputed  to  Michael  Angelo  seems  rather  to  have  arisen  from 

a  contempt  for  others  than  from  any  overweening  opinion  of  hims>  was 

too  proud  to  be  vain.     He  had  placed  his  standard  of  perfection  so  high,  that  to 

■'     ' "  '  ■   'is  life  he  considered  himself  as  striving  after  that  ideal  excel- 

.n  revealed  to  him.  hot    ro  whicli   he  conoiMvcd  that   others 
In  allusion 
>us,  which  repn  a  uirdur- 

'V  impara  "  (•-' 

HaaiaviHOfe  nnAMHan 

iod,  in  lo  the  earth, 

,  Leonardo  Buonar- 

.1   .  r-,.„.„^  YisA  his 

:  :ev  vere 

i  J  bust  suii 

I-  .•..,...!,...... 

■elo  wa~ 


,  and 
tue,  and 


RAPHAEL 


221 


T 


RAPHAEL 

By  Mrs.  Lee 
(1483-1520) 

HE  solemn  and  silent  season  of  Lent  had  passed 
away ;  and,  on  the  second  evening  of  the  joyful 
Easter,  a  house  was  seen  brightly  illuminated  in  one  of 
the  streets  of  Urbino.  It  was  evident  that  a  festival 
was  held  there  on  some  happy  occasion.  The  sound  of 
music  was  heard,  and  guest  after  guest  entered  the  man- 
sion. No  one,  however,  was  more  cordially  welcomed 
than  Pietro  Perugino,  the  fellow-student  of  Leonardo 
da  Vinci,  at  the  school  of  the  good  old  Andrea  \^eroc- 
chio. 

For  a  moment,  general  gayety  was  suspended  in 
honor  of  the  guest.  He  was  considered  at  that  time  one 
of  the  greatest  painters  of  the  age  ;  and  the  host,  Giovanni  di  Sanzio,  though 
himself  only  ranking  in  the  second  or  third  order  of  limners,  knew  well  how  to 
prize  the  rare  talents  of  his  visitor. 

The  wife  of  Giovanni  came  forward,  leading  her  son  Raphael.  Perugino  had 
the  eye  of  an  artist :  he  gazed  upon  the  mother  and  son  with  enthusiastic  feeling ; 
the  striking  resemblance  they  bore  to  each  other,  so  exquisitely  modulated  by 
years  and  sex,  was  indeed  a  study  for  this  minute  copyist  of  nature. 

"  Benvenuto,  Messer  Perugino,"  said  the  hostess,  with  her  soft  musical  voice 
and  graceful  Italian  accent,  and  she  placed  the  hand  of  her  boy  in  that  of  the 
artist.  Gently  he  laid  the  other  on  the  head  of  the  youthful  Raphael,  and  in  a 
solemn  and  tender  manner  pronounced  a  benediction. 

"  Your  blessing  is  well  timed,  my  honored  friend,"  said  Giovanni,  "our  festi- 
val is  given  to  celebrate  the  birthday  of  our  son." 
"  Is  this  his  birthday?"  inquired  Perugino. 

"  Not  so,"  replied  the  father,  "  he  was  born  on  April  7th,  the  evening  of  Good 
Friday,  and  it  well  befits  us  to  be  gav  on  the  joyful  Easter  that  succeeds  it." 

"  My  friend,"  said  Perugino,  "  if  thou  wilt  entrust  thy  boy  to  my  care,  I  will 
take  him  as  my  pupil." 

The  father  acceded  with  delight  to  this  proposal.  When  the  mother  became 
acquainted  with  the  arrangement,  and  found  that  her  son  was  to  quit  his  paternal 
dwelling  at  the  early  age  of  twelve,  and  reside  wholly  with  Perugino,  she  could 
not  restrain  her  tears.  With  hers  the  young  Raphael's  mingled,  though  ever  and 
anon  a  bright  smile  darted  like  a  sunbeam  across  his  face. 

He  remained  with  Perugino  several  years.  Raphael  was  made  for  affection, 
and  fondly  did  his  heart  cling  to  his  instructor.     For  a  time  he  was  content  to 


222  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

follow  his  manner  ;  but  at  length  he  began  to  dwell  upon  his  own  beau  ideal ;  he 
grew  impatient  of  imitation,  and  felt  that  his  style  was  deficient  in  freshness  and 
ori-jinality.  He  longed  to  pass  the  narrow  l)ounds  to  which  his  invention  had 
been  confined. 

With  the  approbation  of  Perugino  and  the  consent  of  his  parents,  he  repaired 
to  Siena  ;  here  he  was  solicited  to  adorn  the  public  library  with  fresco,  and 
painted  there  with  great  success.  But  while  he  was  busily  engaged,  his  friend, 
Pinturrichio,  one  day  entered.  After  looking  at  his  friend's  work  very  atten- 
tively, "  Bravo  ! "  he  exclaimed,  "  thou  hast  done  well,  my  Raphael — but  I  have 
just  returned  from  Florence — oh,  would  that  thou  couldst  behold  the  works  of 
Leonardo  da  Vinci  !  Such  horses !  they  paw  the  ground  and  shake  the  foam 
from  their  manes.  Oh,  my  poor  Raphael !  thou  hast  never  seen  nature  ;  thou 
art  wasting  time  on  these  cartoons.  Perugino  is  a  good  man  and  a  good  painter, 
I  will  not  deny  that — but  Leonardo's  horses  !  " 

Raphael  threw  aside  his  pencil  and  hastily  rose. 

"  Where  now  ?  "  asked  his  friend  ;  "  whither  art  thou  going  so  hastily  ?" 

"  To  Florence,"  exclaimed  Raphael. 

"  And  what  carries  you  so  suddenly  ?  " 

"The  horses  of  Leonardo,"  replied  the  young  artist,  sportively;  "seriously, 
however,  the  desire  of  excellence  implanted  in  my  soul." 

When  he  arrived  at  Florence  he  was  charmed  with  the  appearance  of  the 
city  ;  but  his  whole  mind  was  absorbed  in  the  works  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and 
of  Michael  Angelo,  the  rival  artists  of  the  age.  As  his  stay  was  to  be  short,  he 
did  not  enter  upon  laborious  occupation.  His  mornings  were  passed  in  the  rev- 
eries of  his  art  ;  his  evenings  in  the  gay  and  fascinating  society  of  Florence, 
where  the  fame  of  Perugino's  beloved  pupil  had  already  reached.  The  frescos  at 
Siena  were  spoken  of  ;  and  the  beautiful  countenance  and  graceful  deportment 
of  Raphael  won  him  the  friendship  of  distinguished  men.  Taddeo  Taddei,  the 
learned  friend  of  Cardinal  Bembo,  solicited  him  to  reside  in  his  house  ;  he  con- 
sented, and  in  return  for  the  courtesy  painted  for  him  two  pictures,  in  what  is 
called  his  first  style,  that  of  Perugino. 

One  evening  he  retired  to  his  couch  at  a  late  hour.  He  had  been  the  hero  of 
a  fete,  and  love  and  beauty  had  heedlessly  scattered  their  flowers  in  the  path  of 
the  living  Adonis.  In  vain  he  sought  a  few  hours  of  slumber.  He  had  quaffed 
the  juice  of  the  grape,  emptying  goblet  after  goblet,  till  his  beating  pulse  and 
throbbing  temples  refused  to  be  quieted.  He  started  from  his  couch  and  ap- 
proached the  lattice  ;  the  heavens  had  changed  their  aspect,  the  still  serenity  of 
the  evening  had  passed  away,  and  the  clouds  were  hurrying  over  the  pale  and 
watery  moon.  Nothing  was  heard  but  the  low  sighing  of  the  wind,  and  now 
and  then  a  sudden  gust  swept  through  the  lattice,  and  threatened  to  extinguish 
the  taper  which  was  burning  dimly  on  the  table.  A  slight  noise  made  him  turn 
his  eyes,  and  he  perceived  a  note  that  the  wind  had  displaced.  He  hastily  took 
it  up.  It  was  Perugino's  handwriting.  He  cut  the  silken  cord  that  fastened  it, 
and  read  : 


RAPHAEL  22S 

"  On  me,  my  beloved  Raffaello,  devolves  the  task  of  informing  you  of  the 
events  which  have  taken  place  at  Urbino.  May  this  letter  find  you  prepared  for 
all  the  changes  of  life  ;  a  wise  man  will  never  suffer  himself  to  be  taken  by  sur- 
prise ;  this  is  true  philosoph}-,  and  the  only  philosophy  that  can  serve  us  !  An 
epidemic  has  prevailed  at  Urbino,  and  has  entered  your  paternal  dwelling.  Need 
I  say  more  ?  Come  to  me,  my  son,  at  Perugia,  for  1  am  the  only  parent  that  re- 
mains to  you.      Pietro  Perugino." 

As  he  hastily  arose,  a  crucifix  which  his  mother  had  suspended  to  his  neck  at 
parting,  fell  from  his  bosom.  Even  the  symbols  of  religion  are  sacred  where  the 
living  principle  has  been  early  implanted  in  the  heart.  He  pressed  it  to  his  lips : 
"  Ah  !"  thought  he,  "what  is  the  philosophy  of  Perugino,  compared  to  the  faith 
of  which  this  is  the  emblem?"  His  thoughts  went  back  to  infancy  and  child- 
hood, and  his  grief  and  remorse  grew  less  intense.  He  dwelt  on  the  deep  and 
enduring  love  of  his  parents  till  he  felt  assured  death  could  not  extinguish  it,  and 
that  he  should  see  them  again  in  a  brighter  sphere. 

When  morning  came  it  found  Raphael  calm  and  composed  ;  the  lines  of  grief 
and  thought  were  deeply  marked  on  his  youthful  face  ;  but  the  whirlwind  and  the 
storm  had  passed.  He  took  leave  of  his  friends,  and  hastened  to  Perugino,  who 
received  him  with  the  fondness  of  a  parent. 

Here  he  remained  some  time,  and  at  length  collected  sufficient  resolu- 
tion to  return  to  Urbino,  and  once  more  enter  the  mansion  of  his  desolated 
home. 

It  was  necessary  for  him  to  reside  at  his  native  place  for  a  number  of  months. 
During  that  time  he  painted  several  fine  pictures.  His  heart,  however,  yearned 
for  Florence,  and  he  returned  to  it  once  more  with  the  determination  of  making 
it  his  home.  With  far  different  sensations  did  he  a  second  time  enter  the  city  of 
beauty.  The  freshness  of  his  gayety  was  blighted  ;  lessons  of  earthly  disappoint- 
ment were  ever  present  to  his  mind,  and  he  returned  to  it  with  the  resolute  pur- 
pose of  devoting  himself  to  serious  occupation. 

How  well  he  fulfilled  this  resolution  all  Italy  can  bear  witness.  From  this 
time  he  adopted  what  has  been  called  his  second  manner.  He  painted  for  the 
Duke  of  Urbino  the  beautiful  picture  of  the  Saviour  at  sunrise,  with  the  morning 
light  cast  over  a  face  resplendent  with  divinity  ;  the  flowers  glittering  with  dew, 
the  two  disciples  beyond,  still  buried  in  slumber,  at  the  time  when  the  Saviour 
turns  his  eyes  upon  them  with  that  tender  and  sorrowful  exclamation,  "  Could  ye 
not  watch  one  hour  ?  " 

Raphael  enriched  the  city  of  Florence  with  his  works.  When  asked  what 
had  suggested  some  of  the  beautiful  combinations  of  his  paintings,  he  said,  "They 
came  to  me  in  my  sleep."  At  other  times  he  called  them  "visions;"  and  then 
again  said  they  were  the  result  of  "una  certa  idea  che  mi  viene  alia  mente."  It 
was  this  power  of  drawing  from  the  deep  wells  of  his  own  mind  that  gave  such 
character,  originality,  and  freshness  to  his  works.  lie  found  that  power  within 
which  so  many  seek,  and  seek  in  vain,  without. 

At  the  age  of  twenty-five  Raphael  was  summoned  by  the  pope  to  paint  the 


224  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

chambers  of  the  Vatican.  The  famous  frescos  of  the  Vatican  need  neither  enu- 
meration  nor  description  ;  the  world  is  their  judge  and  their  eulogist. 

No  artist  ever  consecrated  his  works  more  by  his  affections  than  Raphael. 
The  same  hallowed  influence  of  the  heart  gave  inexpressible  charm  to  Correggio's, 
afterward.  One  of  Raphael's  friends  said  to  him,  in  looking  upon  particular  fig- 
ures in  his  groups,  "  You  have  transmitted  to  posterity  your  own  likeness." 

"  See  you  nothing  be3"ond  that  ? "  replied  the  artist. 

"  I  see,"  said  the  critic,  "  the  deep-blue  eye,  and  the  long,  fair  hair  parted  on 
the  forehead." 

"  Observe,"  said  Raphael,  "  the  feminine  softness  of  expression,  the  beautiful 
harmony  of  thought  and  feeling.  When  I  take  my  pencil  for  high  and  noble 
purposes,  the  spirit  of  my  mother  hovers  over  me.  It  is  her  countenance,  not 
my  own,  of  which  you  trace  the  resemblance." 

This  expression  is  always  observable  in  his  Madonnas.  His  portraits  of  the 
Fornarina  are  widely  different.  Raphael,  in  his  last  and  most  excellent  style, 
united  what  was  graceful  and  exquisite  in  Leonardo  with  the  sublime  and  noble 
manner  of  Michael  Angelo.  It  is  the  privilege  and  glory  of  genius  to  appropriate 
to  itself  whatever  is  noble  and  true.  The  region  of  thought  is  thus  made  a  com- 
mon ground  for  all,  and  one  master  mind  becomes  a  reservoir  for  the  present 
and  future  times. 

When  Raphael. was  invited  to  Rome  by  Pope  Julius  II.,  Michael  Angelo  was 
at  the  height  of  his  glory  ;  his  character  tended  to  inspire  awe  rather  than  affec- 
tion ;  he  delighted  in  the  majestic  and  the  terrible.  In  boldness  of  conception 
and  grandeur  of  design,  he  surpassed  Leonardo,  but  never  could  reach  the  sweet- 
ness and  gentleness  of  his  figures.  Even  his  children  lose  something  of  their  in- 
fantine beauty,  and  look  mature  ;  his  women  are  commanding  and  lofty  ;  his  men 
of  gigantic  proportions.  His  painting,  like  his  sculpture,  is  remarkable  for  ana- 
tomical exactness,  and  perfect  expression  of  the  muscles.  For  this  union  of 
magnificence  and  sublimity,  it  was  necessary  to  prepare  the  mind  ;  the  first  view 
was  almost  harsh,  and  it  was  by  degrees  that  his  mighty  works  produced  their  de- 
signed effect.  Raphael,  while  he  felt  all  the  greatness  of  the  Florentine,  con- 
ceived that  there  might  be  something  more  like  nature — something  that  should  be 
harmonious,  sweet,  and  flowing  —  that  should  convey  the  idea  of  intellectual 
rather  than  of  external  majesty.  Without  yielding  any  of  the  correctness  of 
science,  he  avoided  harshness,  and  imitated  antiquity  in  uniting  grace  and  ele- 
gance with  a  strict  observation  of  science  and  of  the  rules  of  art. 

It  was  with  surprise  that  Michael  Angelo  beheld  in  the  youthful  Raphael  a 
rival  artist  ;  nor  did  he  receive  this  truth  meekly  ;  he  treated  him  with  coldness 
and  distance.  In  the  meantime  Raphael  went  on  with  his  works  ;  he  completed 
the  frescos  of  the  Vatican,  and  designed  the  cartoons.  He  also  produced  those 
exquisite  paintings  in  oil  which  seem  the  perfection  of  human  art. 

Human  affection  is  necessary  to  awaken  the  sympathy  of  human  beings  ;  and 
Raphael,  in  learning  how  to  portray  it,  had  found  the  way  to  the  heart.  In  mere 
grandeur  of  invention  he  was  surpassed  by  Michael  Angelo,     Titian  excelled  him 


a: 


RAPHAEL  225 

in  coloring,  and  Correggio  in  the  beautiful  gradation  of  tone  ;  but  Raphael  knew 
how  to  paint  the  soul  ;  in  this  he  stood  alone.  This  was  the  great  secret  of  a 
power  which  seemed  to  operate  like  magic.  In  his  paintings  there  is  something 
which  makes  music  on  the  chords  of  every  heart  ;  for  they  are  the  expression  of 
a  mind  attuned  to  nature,  and  find  answering  sympathies  in  the  universal  soul. 

While  Michael  Angelo  was  exalted  with  the  Epic  grandeur  of  his  own  Dante, 
Raphael  presented  the  most  finished  scenes  of  dramatic  life,  and  might  be  com- 
pared to  the  immortal  Shakespeare — scenes  of  spiritual  beauty,  of  devotion,  and 
of  pastoral  simplicity,  yet  uniting  a  classic  elegance  which  the  poet  does  not  pos- 
sess.    Buonarroti  was  the  wonder  of  Italy,  and  Raphael  became  its  idol. 

Julius  was  so  much  enchanted  with  his  paintings  in  the  halls  of  the  Vatican, 
that  he  ordered  the  frescos  of  former  artists  to  be  destroyed.  Among  them  were 
some  of  Perugino's,  but  Raphael  would  not  suffer  these  to  be  removed  for  his 
own  ;  he  viewed  them  as  the  relics  of  a  beloved  and  honored  friend,  and  they 
were  consecrated  by  tender  and  grateful  feelings. 

Raphael  collected  from  every  part  of  the  world  medallions  of  intaglios  and 
antiques  to  assist  him  in  his  designs.  He  loved  splendor  and  convivialitv,  and 
gave  offence  thereby  to  the  rigid  and  austere.  It  was  said  that  he  had  a  prospect 
of  changing  the  graceful  beretta  for  a  cardinal's  hat ;  but  this  idea  might  have 
arisen  from  the  delay  which  existed  in  his  marriage  with  Cardinal  Bibiano's  niece, 
whose  hand  her  uncle  had  offered  to  him.  Peremptorily  to  reject  this  proposal 
of  the  cardinal  without  giving  offence  would  have  been  impossible,  and  Raphael 
was  too  gentle  in  his  own  feelings  voluntarily  to  injure  another's  ;  but  he  was 
not  one  to  sacrifice  his  affections  to  ambition. 

Whatever  were  the  struggles  of  his  heart,  they  were  early  terminated. 
Amid  the  caresses  of  the  great,  the  fond  and  devoted  friendship  of  his  equals, 
the  enthusiastic  love  of  his  pupils,  the  adulation  of  his  inferiors,  while  crowned 
with  wealth,  fame,  and  honor,  and  regarded  as  the  equal  of  the  hitherto  greatest 
artist  in  the  world,  he  was  suddenly  called  avvav.  He  died  on  Good  Friday,  the 
day  of  his  birth,  at  the  age  of  thirty-seven,  1520. 

We  are  sometimes  impressed  with  veneration  when  those  who  have  even 
drunk  the  cup  of  life  almost  to  its  dregs  resign  it  with  resignation  and  Christian 
faith.      But  Raphael  calmly  and  firmly  resigned  it  when  it  was  full  to  the  brim. 

Leo  X.  and  Cardinal  Bibiano  were  by  his  bedside.  The  sublime  picture  of 
the  "Transfiguration,"  the  last  and  greatest  which  he  painted,  was  placed  oppo- 
site to  him,  by  his  own  desire.  How  impressive  must  ha\c  been  the  scene  !  His 
dying  eye  turned  from  the  crucifix  he  held  in  his  liand  to  the  glory  of  the  beati- 
fied Saviour. 

His  contemporaries  speak  of  him  as  affectionate,  disinterested,  modest,  and 
sincere  ;  encouraging  humble  merit,  and  freely  giving  his  advice  and  assistance 
where  it  was  needed  and  deserved. 


15 


226 


ARTISTS  AND   AUTHORS 


TITIAN 


By  Giorgio  Vasari  * 


1477-1576 

TITIAN  was  born  in  the  year  1480,  at  Ca- 
dore,  a  small  place  distant  about  five  miles 
from  the  foot  of  the  Alps  ;  he  belonged  to  the 
family  of  the  Vecelli,  which  is  among  the  most 
noble  of  those  parts.  Giving  early  proof  of 
much  intelligence,  he  was  sent  at  the  age  of 
ten  to  an  uncle  in  Venice,  an  honorable  citizen, 
who,  seeing  the  boy  to  be  much  inclined  to 
painting,  placed  him  with  the  excellent  paint- 
er, Gian  Bellino,  then  very  famous.  Under  his 
care,  the  youth  soon  proved  himself  to  be  en- 
dowed by  nature  with  all  the  gifts  of  judgment 
and  genius  required  for  the  art  of  painting. 
Now,  Gian  Bellino  and  the  other  masters  of 
that  country,  not  having  the  habit  of  studying 
the  antique,  were  accustomed  to  copy  only 
what  they  saw  before  them,  and  that  in  a  dry, 
hard,  lal)ored  manner,  which  Titian  also  acquired  ;  but  about  the  year  1507, 
Giorgione  da  Castel  Franco,  not  being  satisfied  with  that  mode  of  proceeding, 
began  to  give  to  his  works  an  unwonted  softness  and  relief,  painting  them  in  a 
very  beautiful  manner  ;  yet  he  by  no  means  neglected  to  draw  from  the  life,  or  to 
copy  nature  with  his  colors  as  closely  as  he  could  ;  and  in  doing  the  latter  he 
shaded  with  colder  or  warmer  tints  as  the  living  object  might  demand,  but  with- 
out first  making  a  drawing ;  since  he  held  that,  to  paint  with  the  colors  only, 
without  any  drawing  on  paper,  was  the  best  mode  of  proceeding,  and  most  per- 
fectly in  accord  with  the  true  principles  of  design. 

Having  seen  the  manner  of  Giorgione,  Titian  early  resolved  to  abandon  that 
of  Gian  Bellino,  although  well  grounded  therein.  He  now,  therefore,  devoted 
himself  to  this  purpose,  and  in  a  short  time  so  closely  imitated  Giorgione  that  his 
pictures  were  sometimes  taken  for  those  of  that  master,  as  will  be  related  below. 
Increasing  in  age,  judgment,  and  facility  of  hand,  our  young  artist  executed  nu- 
merous works  in  fresco  which  cannot  here  be  named  individually,  having  been  dis- 
persed in  various  places  ;  let  it  suffice  to  say,  that  they  were  such  as  to  cause  ex- 

*  Giorgio  Vasari,  a  contemporary  of  Titian,  and  himself  a  painter  of  no  mean  rank,  wrote  a  series  of  lives 
of  the  Italian  artists,  from  which  the  following  is  extracted.  There  are  several  slight  inaccuracies  in  his  work. 
Titian  was  born,  not  in  1480,  but  in  1 477,  and  died  in  I  576.  He  was  in  coloring  the  greatest  artist  who  ever 
lived. 


TITIAN  227 

perienced  men  to  anticipate  the  excellence  to  which  he  afterward  attained.  At 
the  time  when  Titian  began  to  adopt  the  manner  of  Giorgione,  being  then  not 
more  than  eighteen,  he  took  the  portrait  of  a  gentleman  of  the  Barberigo  family, 
who  was  his  friend,  and  this  was  considered  very  beautiful,  the  coloring  being 
true  and  natural,  and  the  hair  so  distinctly  painted  that  each  one  could  be  counted 
as  might  also  the  stitches  in  a  satin  doublet,  painted  in  the  same  work  ;  it  was  so 
well  and  carefully  done,  that  it  would  have  been  taken  for  a  picture  by  Giorgione, 
if  Titian  had  not  written  his  name  on  the  dark  ground. 

Giorgione  meanwhile  had  executed  the  fagade  of  the  German  Exchange, 
when,  by  the  intervention  of  Barberigo,  Titian  was  appointed  to  paint  certain 
stories  in  the  same  building  and  over  the  Merceria.  After  which  he  executed  a 
picture  with  figures  the  size  of  life,  which  is  now  in  the  Hall  of  Messer  Andrea 
Loredano,  who  dwells  near  San  Marcuola  ;  this  work  represents  "  Our  Lady  "  in 
her  flight  into  Egypt.  She  is  in  the  midst  of  a  great  wood,  and  the  landscape  of 
this  picture  is  well  done  ;  Titian  having  practised  that  branch  of  art,  and  keep- 
ing certain  Germans,  who  were  excellent  masters  therein,  for  several  months  to- 
gether in  his  own  house.  Within  the  wood  he  depicted  various  animals,  all  painted 
from  the  life,  and  so  natural  as  to  seem  almost  alive.  In  the  house  of  Messer 
Giovanni  Danna,  a  Flemish  gentleman  and  merchant,  who  was  his  gossip,  he 
painted  a  portrait  which  appears  to  breathe,  with  an  "  Ecce  Homo,"  comprising 
numerous  figures  which,  by  Titian  himself,  as  well  as  others,  is  considered  to  be  a 
very  good  work.  The  same  artist  executed  a  picture  of  "  Our  Lady,"  with 
other  figures  the  size  of  life,  men  and  children  being  all  taken  from  nature,  and 
portraits  of  persons  belonging  to  the  Danna  family. 

In  the  year  1507,  when  the  Emperor  Maximilian  was  making  war  on  the 
Venetians,  Titian,  as  he  relates  himself,  painted  the  "Angel  Raphael,  with 
Tobit  and  a  Dog,"  in  the  Church  of  San  Marziliano.  There  is  a  distant  land- 
scape in  this  picture,  wherein  San  Giovanni  Battista  is  seen  at  prayer  in  a  wood  ; 
he  is  looking  up  to  heaven,  and  his  face  is  illumined  by  a  light  descending  thence  ; 
sorq.e  believe  this  picture  to  have  been  done  before  that  on  the  "  Exchange  of  the 
Germans,"  mentioned  above,  was  commenced.  Now,  it  chanced  that  certain  gen- 
tlemen, not  knowing  that  Giorgione  no  longer  worked  at  this  fagadc,  and  that 
Titian  was  doing  it  (nay,  had  already  given  that  part  over  the  Merceria  to  pub- 
lic view),  met  the  former,  and  began  as  friends  to  rejoice  with  him,  declaring 
that  he  was  acquitting  himself  better  on  the  side  of  the  Merceria  than  he  had 
done  on  that  of  the  "  Grand  Canal ; "  which  remark  caused  Giorgione  so  much 
vexation;  that  he  would  scarcely  permit  himself  to  be  seen  until  the  whole  work 
was  completed,  and  Titian  had  become  generally  known  as  the  painter  ;  nor  did 
he  thenceforward  hold  any  intercourse  with  the  latter  and  they  were  no  longer 
friends. 

In  the  year  1508,  Titian  published  a  wood-engraving  of  the  "Triumph  of 
Faith  ;"  it  comprised  a  vast  number  of  figures  :  our  first  Parents,  the  Patriarchs, 
the  Prophets,  the  Sybils,  the  Innocents,  the  Martyrs,  the  Apostles,  and  Our  Sa- 
viour Christ  borne  in  triumph  by  the  four  Evangelists,  and  the  four  Doctors,  fol- 


228  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

lowed  by  the  holy  Confessors  ;  here  Titian  displayed  much  boldness,  a  fine  man- 
ner, and  improving  facility.  1  remember  that  Fra  Bastiano  del  Piombo,  speaking 
on  this  subject,  told  me  that  if  Titian  had  then  gone  to  Rome,  and  seen  the 
works  of  Michael  Angelo,  with  those  of  Raphael  and  the  ancients,  he  was  con- 
vinced, the  admirable  facility  of  his  coloring  considered,  that  he  would  have  pro- 
duced works  of  the  most  astonishing  perfection  ;  seeing  that,  as  he  well  deserved 
to  be  called  the  most  perfect  imitator  of  Nature  of  our  times,  as  regards  coloring, 
he  might  thus  have  rendered  himself  equal  to  the  Urbinese  or  Buonarroto,  as  re- 
garded the  great  foundation  of  all,  design.  At  a  later  period  Titian  repaired  to 
Vicenza,  where  he  painted  "  The  Judgment  of  Solomon,"  on  the  Loggetta  where- 
in the  courts  of  justice  are  held  ;  a  very  beautiful  work.  Returning  to  Venice, 
he  then  depicted  the  fa9ade  of  the  Germain  ;  at  Padua  he  painted  certain  frescos 
in  the  Church  of  Sant'  Antonio,  the  subjects  taken  from  the  life  of  that  saint ; 
and  in  the  Church  of  Santo  Spirito  he  executed  a  small  picture  of  San  Marco 
seated  in  the  midst  of  other  saints,  whose  faces  are  portraits  painted  in  oil  with 
the  utmost  care ;  this  picture  has  been  taken  for  a  work  of  Giorgione. 

Now,  the  death  of  Giovan  Bellino  had  caused  a  story  in  the  hall  of  the 
Great  Council  to  remain  unfinished  ;  it  was  that  which  represents  Federigo  Bar- 
barossa  kneeling  before  Pope  Alessandro  III.,  who  plants  his  foot  on  the  emper- 
or's neck.  This  was  now  finished  by  Titian,  who  altered  many  parts  of  it,  introduc- 
ing portraits  of  his  friends  and  others.  For  this  he  received  from  the  senate  an 
office  in  the  Exchange  of  the  Germans  called  the  Senseria,  which  brought  him  in 
three  hundred  crowns  yearly,  and  which  those  Signori  usually  give  to  the  most 
eminent  painter  of  their  city,  on  condition  that  from  time  to  time  he  shall  take 
the  portrait  of  their  doge,  or  prince  when  such  shall  be  created,  at  the  price  of 
eight  crowns,  which  the  doge  himself  pays,  the  portrait  being  then  preserved  in 
the  Palace  of  San  Marco,  as  a  memorial  of  that  doge. 

After  the  completion  of  these  works,  our  artist  painted,  for  the  Church  of 
San  Rocco,  a  figure  of  Christ  bearing  his  cross ;  the  Saviour  has  a  rope  round 
his  neck,  and  is  dragged  forward  by  a  Jew  ;  many  have  thought  this  a  work 
of  Giorgione.  It  has  become  an  object  of  the  utmost  devotion  in  Venice, 
and  has  received  more  crowns  as  offerings  than  have  been  earned  by  Titian  and 
Giorgione  both,  through  the  whole  course  of  their  lives.  Now,  Titian  had  taken 
the  portrait  of  Bembo,  then  secretary  to  Pope  Leo  X.,  and  was  by  him  invited 
to  Rome,  that  he  might  see  the  city,  with  Raffaello  da  Urbino  and  other  distin- 
guished persons;  but  the  artist  having  delayed  his  journey  until  1520,  when  the 
pope  and  Raffaello  were  both  dead,  put  it  off  for  that  time  altogether.  For  the 
Church  of  Santa  Maria  Maggiore  he  painted  a  picture  of"  St.  John  the  Baptist  in 
the  wilderness;"  there  is  an  angel  beside  him  that  appears  to  be  living  ;  and  a 
distant  landscape,  with  trees  on  the  bank  of  a  river,  which  are  very  graceful.  He 
took  portraits  of  the  Prince  Grimani  and  Loredano,  which  were  considered  ad- 
mirable ;  and  not  long  afterward  he  painted  the  portrait  of  King  Francis,  who  was 
then  leaving  Italy  to  return  to  France. 

In  1530,  when  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  was  in  Bologna,  Titian,  by  the  inter- 


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TITIAN  229 

vention  of  Pietro  Aretino,  was  invited  to  that  city  by  the  Cardinal  Ippolito  de* 
Medici,  and  there  he  made  a  magnificent  portrait  of  his  majesty  in  full  armor. 
This  gave  so  much  satisfaction  that  the  artist  received  a  present  of  a  thousand 
crowns  for  the  same.  Out  of  these  he  had  subsequently  to  give  the  half  to  Al- 
fonso Lombardi,  the  sculptor,  who  had  made  a  model  of  that  monarch  to  be  exe- 
cuted in  marble. 

Having  returned  to  Venice,  Titian  there  found  that  many  gentlemen  had  be- 
gun to  favor  Pordenone,  commending  exceedingly  the  works  executed  by  that 
artist  in  the  ceiling  of  the  Hall  of  the  Pregai,  and  elsewhere.  They  had  also  pro- 
cured him  the  commission  for  a  small  picture  in  the  Church  of  San  Giovanni 
Elemosynario,  which  they  intended  him  to  paint  in  competition  with  one  repre- 
senting that  saint  in  his  episcopal  habits,  which  had  previously  been  executed 
there  by  Titian.  But  whatever  care  and  pains  Pordenone  took,  he  could  not 
equal  nor  even  approach  the  work  of  the  former.  Titian  was  then  appointed  to 
paint  a  picture  of  the  Annunciation  for  the  Church  of  Santa  Maria  degli  An- 
geli,  at  Murano  ;  but  those  who  gave  the  commission  for  the  work,  not  wishing 
to  pay  so  much  as  five  hundred  crowns,  which  Titian  required  as  its  price,  he  sent 
it,  by  the  advice  of  Pietro  Aretino,  as  a  gift  to  Charles  V.,  who  being  greatly  de- 
lighted with  the  work,  made  him  a  present  of  two  thousand  crowns.  The  place 
which  the  picture  was  to  have  occupied  at  Murano  was  then  filled  by  one  from 
the  hand  of  Pordenone. 

When  the  emperor,  some  time  after  this,  returned  with  his  army  from  Hun- 
gary, and  was  again  at  Bologna,  holding  a  conference  with  Clement  VH.,  he 
desired  to  have  another  portrait  taken  of  him  by  Titian,  who,  before  he  departed 
from  the  city,  also  painted  that  of  the  Cardinal  Ippolito  de  Medici  in  the  Hun- 
garian dress,  with  another  of  the  same  prelate  fully  armed,  which  is  somewhat 
smaller  than  the  first ;  these  are  both  now  in  the  Guardaroba  of  Duke  Cosimo. 
He  painted  the  portraits  of  Alfonso,  Marquis  of  Davalos,  and  of  Pietro  Aretino, 
at  the  same  period,  and  these  things  having  made  him  known  to  Federigo  Gon- 
zaga,  Duke  of  Mantua,  he  entered  the  service  of  the  latter,  and  accompanied  him 
to  his  states.  At  Mantua  our  artist  made  a  portrait  of  the  duke,  which  appears 
to  breathe,  and  afterward  executed  that  of  his  brother,  the  cardinal.  These  be- 
ing finished,  he  painted  twelve  beautiful  "  Heads  of  the  Twelve  Caesars,"  to  deco- 
rate one  of  the  rooms  erected  by  Giulio  Romano,  and  when  they  were  done, 
Giulio  painted  a  "  Story  from  the  Lives  of  the  Emperors"  beneath  each  head. 

The  productions,  but  more  especially  the  portraits,  of  Titian  are  so  numerous 
that  it  would  be  almost  impossible  to  make  the  record  of  them  all.  I  will,  there- 
fore, speak  of  the  principal  only,  and  that  without  order  of  time,  seeing  that  it 
does  not  much  signify  to  tell  which  was  painted  earlier  and  which  later.  He 
took  the  portrait  of  Charles  V.  several  times,  as  we  have  said,  and  was  finally 
invited  by  that  monarch  to  his  court  ;  there  he  painted  him  as  he  was  in  those 
last  years  ;  and  so  much  was  that  most  invincible  emperor  pleased  with  the  man- 
ner of  Titian,  that  once  he  had  been  portrayed  by  him,  he  would  never  permit 
himself  to  be  taken  by  any  other  person.      Each  time  that  Titian   painted  the 


230  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

emperor  he  received  a  present  of  a  thousand  crowns  of  j^old,  and  the  artist  was 
made  a  cavalier,  or  knight,  by  his  majesty,  with  a  revenue  of  two  hundred 
crowns  yearly,  secured  on  the  treasury  of  Naples,  and  attached  to  his  title. 

When  Titian  painted  Filippo,  King  of  Spain,  the  son  of  Charles,  he  received 
another  annuity  of  two  hundred  crowns ;  so  that  these  four  hundred,  added  to 
the  three  hundred  from  the  German  Exchange,  make  him  a  fixed  income  of 
seven  hundred  crowns,  which  he  possesses  without  the  necessity  of  exerting  him- 
self in  any  manner.  Titian  presented  the  portraits  of  Charles  V.  and  his  son 
Filippo  to  the  Duke  Cosimo,  who  has  them  now  in  his  Guardaroba.  He  also 
took  the  portrait  of  Ferdinand,  King  of  the  Romans,  who  was  afterward  em- 
peror, with  those  of  his  children,  Maximilian,  that  is  to  say,  now  emperor,  and 
his  brother  ;  he  likewise  painted  the  Queen  Maria  ;  and  at  the  command  of  the 
Emperor  Charles,  he  portrayed  the  Duke  of  Saxony,  when  the  latter  was  in 
prison.  But  what  a  waste  of  time  is  this  !  when  there  has  scarcely  been  a  noble 
of  high  rank,  scarcely  a  prince  or  lady  of  great  name,  whose  portrait  has  not 
been  taken  by  Titian,  who  in  that  branch  of  art  is  indeed  an  excellent  painter. 

All  these  works,  with  many  others  which  I  omit  to  avoid  prolixity,  have  been 
executed  up  to  the  present  age  of  our  artist,  which  is  above  seventy-six  years. 
Titian  has  been  always  healthy  and  happy  ;  he  has  been  favored  beyond  the  lot 
of  most  men,  and  has  received  from  Heaven  only  favors  and  blessings.  In  his 
house  he  has  entertained  whatever  princes,  literati,  or  men  of  distinction  have 
gone  to  or  dwelt  in  Venice  ;  for,  to  say  nothing  of  his  excellence  in  art,  he  has 
always  distinguished  himself  by  courtesy,  hospitality,  and  rectitude. 

Titian  has  had  some  rivals  in  Venice,  but  not  of  any  great  ability,  wherefore 
he  has  easily  overcome  them  by  the  superiority  of  his  art  ;  while  he  has  also  ren- 
dered himself  acceptable  to  the  gentlemen  of  the  city.  He  has  gained  a  fair 
amount  of  wealth,  his  labors  having  always  been  well  paid  ;  and  it  would  have 
been  well  if  he  had  worked  for  his  amusement  alone  during  these  latter  years, 
that  he  might  not  have  diminished  the  reputation  gained  in  his  best  days  by 
works  of  inferior  merit,  performed  at  a  period  of  life  when  nature  tends  inevi- 
tably to  decline,  and  consequent  imperfection. 

In  the  year  1566,  when  Vasari,  the  writer  of  the  present  history,  was  at  Ven- 
ice, he  went  to  visit  Titian,  as  one  who  was  his  friend,  and  found  him,  although 
then  very  old,  still  with  the  pencils  in  his  hand  and  painting  busily.  Great  pleas- 
ure had  Vasari  in  beholding  his  works  and  in  conversing  with  the  master. 

It  may  be  affirmed,  then,  that  Titian,  having  adorned  Venice,  or  rather  all 
Italy,  and  other  parts  of  the  world,  with  excellent  paintings,  well  merits  to  be 
loved  and  respected  by  artists,  and  in  many  things  to  be  admired  and  imitated 
also,  as  one  who  has  produced,  and  is  producing,  wOrk  of  infinite  merit ;  nay, 
such  as  must  endure  while  the  memor)'  of  illustrious  men  shall  remain. 


ALBERT    DURER 


231 


ALBERT  DURER* 

By  W.  j.  Holland,  Chancellor  of  the  Western  University  of  Pennsylvania 

(1471-1528) 


I 


T  has  been  given  to  some  men  to  be  not 
only  great  in  the  domain  of  art  by  reason 
of  that  which  they  have  themselves  succeeded 
in  producing,  but  by  reason  of  that  which  they 
have  inspired  other  men  to  produce.  They 
have  been  not  merely  artists,  but  teachers,  who 
by  precept  and  example  have  moulded  the 
whole  current  and  drift  of  artistic  thought  in 
the  ages  and  lands  to  which  they  have  be- 
longed. Among  these  lofty  spirits,  who  live 
through  the  centuries  not  only  in  what  their 
hands  once  fashioned,  but  still  more  in  what 
they  have  inspired  others  to  do,  undoubtedly 
one  of  the  greatest  is  Albert  Diirer.  Justly 
reckoned  as  the  representative  artist  of  Ger- 
many, he  has  the  peculiar  honor  of  having 
raised  the  craft  of  the  engraver  to  its  true  posi- 
tion, as  one  of  the  fine  arts.  As  a  painter  not 
unworthy  to  be  classified  with  Titian  and  Raphael,  his  contemporaries  upon 
Italian  soil,  he  poured  the  wealth  of  his  genius  into  woodcuts  and  copperplates, 
and  taught  men  the  practically  measureless  capacity  of  what  before  his  day  had 
been  a  rudimentary  art. 

'Diirer  was  born  in  Nuremberg  on  May  21,  1471.  The  family  was  of  Hun- 
garian origin,  though  the  name  is  German,  and  is  derived  from  Thurer,  meaning 
a  maker  of  doors.  The  ancestral  calling  of  the  family  probably  was  that  of  the 
carpenter.  Albert  Diirer,  the  father  of  the  great  artist,  was  a  goldsmith,  and 
settled  about  1460  in  Nuremberg,  where  he  served  as  an  assistant  to  Hierony- 
mus  Holper,  a  master  goldsmith,  whose  daughter,  Barbara,  he  married  in  1468. 
He  was  at  the  time  forty  years  of  age,  and  she  fifteen.  As  the  result  of  the 
union  eighteen  children  were  born  into  the  world,  of  whom  Albrecht  was  the 
second.  The  lad,  as  he  grew  up,  became  a  great  favorite  with  his  father,  who 
appeared  to  discern  in  him  the  promise  of  future  ability.  The  feeling  of  attach- 
ment was  reciprocated  in  the  most  filial  manner,  and  there  are  extant  two  well- 
authenticated  portraits  of  the  father  from  the  facile  brush  of  the  son,  one  in  the 
Uffizi  at  Florence,  the  other  in  the  possession  of  the  Duke  of  Northumberland. 
It  was  the  original  intention  of  the  father  of  the  artist  that  he  should  follow  the 
craft  of  the  goldsmith,  but  after  serving  a  period  as  an  apprentice  in  his  father's 

"Copyright,  1B94,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


232  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

shop,  his  strong  predilection  for  the  calling  of  the  painter  manifested  itself  to 
such  a  degree  that  the  father  reluctantly  consented  to  allow  the  boy  to  follow  his 
natural  bent,  and  placed  him  under  the  tutelage  of  Michael  Wohlgemuth,  the 
principal  painter  of  Nuremberg.  Wohlgemuth  was  a  representativ^e  artist  of  his 
time,  who  followed  his  calling  after  a  mechanical  fashion,  having  a  large  shop 
filled  with  apprentices  who,  under  his  direction  and  with  his  assistance,  busied 
themselves  in  turning  out  for  a  small  consideration  altar-pieces  and  pictures  of 
martyrdoms,  which  were  in  vogue  as  necessary  parts  of  decoration  in  churches. 
Numerous  examples  of  the  work  of  Wohlgemuth  and  his  contemporaries  survive, 
attesting,  by  the  wealth  of  crudities  and  unintended  caricatures  with  which  they 
abound,  the  comparatively  low  stage  of  development  attained  by  the  art  of  the 
painter  in  Germany  at  that  day.  According  to  Diirer,  the  period  of  his  appren- 
ticeship to  Wohlgemuth  was  spent  profitably,  and  resulted  in  large  acquisitions 
of  technical  skill.  The  period  of  his  preliminary  training  being  ended,  he  set 
forth  upon  his  "  Wanderjahre,"  and  travelled  extensively.  Just  what  points  he 
visited  cannot  with  certainty  be  determined.  It  is  ascertained  beyond  doubt  that 
he  visited  Colmar,  where  he  was  hospitably  entertained  by  the  family  of  Martin 
Schongauer,  the  greatest  painter  of  his  time  on  German  soil,  but  who  had  died 
shortly  before  the  visit  of  Durer.  He  also  visited  Strasburg,  and  it  is  thought 
by  many  that  he  extended  his  journeyings  as  far  as  Venice.  In  1494  he  returned 
to  Nuremberg,  and  in  the  month  of  July  was  married  to  Agnes  Frey,  the  daugh- 
ter of  a  prosperous  merchant  of  the  city.  He  was  twenty-three  years  of  age,  and 
she  somewhat  younger.  They  lived  together  happily,  though  no  children  were 
born  to  them,  and  it  has  been  proved  that  the  reputation  which  has  been  given 
her,  of  being  little  better  than  a  common  scold,  who  imbittered  his  life  by  her 
termagancy,  is  the  creation  of  the  ill  temper  of  one  of  the  testy  friends  of  Durer, 
Willibald  Pirkheimer,  who,  in  the  spirit  of  spitefulness,  besmirched  her  character 
in  a  letter  which  unfortunately  survives  to  this  day,  and  in  which  he  accuses  her 
of  having  led  her  husband  a  mad  and  weary  dance  by  her  temper.  The  reason 
for  this  ebullition  on  the  part  of  Pirkheimer  appears  to  have  been  that,  after 
Durer's  death,  she  refused  to  give  him  a  pair  of  antlers  which  had  belonged  to 
her  husband,  and  which  Pirkheimer  had  set  his  heart  upon  having. 

The  first  eleven  years  of  the  married  life  of  Dtirer  were  spent  in  Nuremberg, 
where  he  devoted  himself  with  unremitting  assiduity  to  the  prosecution  of  his 
art.  During  these  years  his  powers  unfolded  rapidly,  and  there  are  extant  two 
notable  pictures,  which  were  undoubtedly  produced  at  this  time,  the  triptych  in 
the  Dresden  Gallery,  and  an  altar-piece  which  is  in  the  palace  of  the  Archbishop 
of  Vienna,  at  Ober  St.  Veit.  These  compositions,  while  remarkable  in  many 
respects,  still  reveal  the  influence  of  his  master,  Wohlgemuth,  and  give  evidence 
of  having  been  in  part  executed  with  the  assistance  of  apprentices.  In  fact,  the 
peak-gabled  house  at  the  foot  of  the  castle-mound  in  Nuremberg  was  a  picture 
factory  like  that  of  Wohlgemuth,  in  which,  however,  work  of  a  higher  order  than 
any  hitherto  produced  in  Germany  was  being  turned  out.  We  know  the  names 
of  four  or  five  of  those  who  served  as  apprentices  under  Durer  at  this  time,  and 


UuUf-NMULLER  PINXIT. 


ALBERT  DURER'S  WEDDING. 


ALBERT   DiJRER  233 

they  are  stars  of  lesser  magnitude  in  the  constellation  of  German  art.  But  Durer 
was  not  contented  simply  to  employ  his  talents  in  the  production  of  painted 
altar-pieces,  and  we  find  him  turning  out  a  number  of  engravings,  the  most 
noticeable  among  which  are  his  sixteen  great  wood-cuts  illustrating  the  Apoca- 
Iv^pse,  which  were  published  in  1498.  The  theme  was  one  which  had  peculiar 
fascinations  for  all  classes  at  the  time.  The  breaking  up  of  all  pre-existing 
systems,  the  wonderful  stirrings  of  a  new  life  which  were  beginning  to  be  felt 
everywhere  with  the  close  of  the  Middle  Age  and  the  dawning  of  the  Renais- 
sance, had  filled  the  minds  of  men  with  wonder,  and  caused  them  to  turn  to  the 
writings  of  the  Apocal)'ptic  Seer  with  keenest  interest.  A  recent  critic,  com- 
menting upon  his  work  as  represented  in  these  engravings,  says  :  "  The  energy 
and  undismayed  simplicity  of  his  imagination  enable  him,  in  this  order  of  crea- 
tions, to  touch  the  highest  point  of  human  achievement.  The  four  angels  keep- 
ing back  the  winds  that  they  blow  not,  the  four  riders,  the  loosing  of  the  angels 
of  the  Euphrates  to  slay  the  third  part  of  men — these  and  others  are  conceptions 
of  such  force,  such  grave  or  tempestuous  grandeur,  in  the  midst  of  grotesque- 
ness,  as  the  art  of  no  other  age  or  hand  has  produced." 

At  this  period  Diirer  was  also  engaged  in  experimenting  upon  the  art  of 
copper-plate  engraving,  in  which  he  restricted  himself  mainly  to  reproducing 
copies  of  the  works  of  other  artists,  among  them  those  of  Jacopo  de  Barbari,  a 
painter  of  the  Italian  school,  who  was  residing  in  Nuremberg,  and  who  among 
other  things  gave  the  great  artist  instruction  in  plastic  anatomy.  The  influence 
of  his  instructor  is  plain,  when  we  compare  engravings  executed  about  1504  with 
those  published  at  a  previous  date,  and  especially  when  we  examine  his  design 
of  the  Passion  of  our  Lord  painted  in  white  upon  a  green  ground,  commonly 
known  as  "The  Green  Passion,"  which  is  treasured  in  the  Albertina  at  Prague. 
He  also  during  these  twelve  years  finished  seven  of  the  twelve  great  wood-cuts 
illustrating  the  passion,  and  sixteen  of  the  twenty  cuts  which  compose  the  series 
known  as  "The  Life  of  the  Virgin."  The  activities  of  Diirer  in  Nuremberg 
'  were  temporarily  interrupted  by  a  journey  to  Italy,  which  he  undertook  in  the 
fall  of  the  year  1505.  What  the  immediate  occasion  for  undertaking  this 
journey  may  have  been  is  not  plain,  though  it  seems  most  likely  that  one  of  his 
objects  was  to  enable  him  to  recuperate  from  the  effects  of  a  protracted  illness, 
from  which  he  had  suffered  during  the  summer  of  this  year,  and  also  incidentally 
to  secure  a  market  for  his  wares  in  Venice,  the  commercial  relationships  of  whicii 
with  Nuremberg  were  very  close  at  this  period.  A  German  colony,  composed 
largely  of  Nuremberg  factors  and  merchants,  was  located  at  this  time  in  \''enice, 
and  they  had  secured  the  privilege  of  dedicating  a  great  painting  in  the  church 
of  St.  Bartholomew.  The  commission  for  the  execution  of  this  painting  was 
secured  by  Diirer.  It  represents  the  adoration  of  the  Virgin,  but  has  been  com- 
monly known  under  the  name  of  "The  Feast  of  the  Rose  Garlands."  After 
having  undergone  many  vicissitudes,  it  is  preserved  to-day  in  a  highly  mutilated 
condition  in  the  monastery  of  Strachow,  near  Prague.  Diirer's  stay  in  Venice 
was  signalized  not  only  by  the  production  of  this  painting,  but  of  three  or  four 


234:  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

other  notable  works  which  still  exist,  and  which  reflect  the  great  influence  upon 
him  of  the  Italian  school  of  painting,  with  which  he  had  attained  familiarity. 
His  stay  in  Venice  lasted  about  a  year.  In  the  fall  of  1506,  he  returned  to 
Nuremberg,  and  there  remained  for  the  ne.xt  fourteen  years,  engaged  in  the 
practice  of  his  art.  These  years  were  years  of  success  and  prosperity.  His  name 
and  fame  had  spread  over  the  whole  of  Europe,  and  the  greatest  artists  of  the 
day  were  glad  to  do  him  homage.  Raphael  said  of  him,  when  contemplating 
some  of  his  designs,  "Truly  this  man  would  have  surpassed  us  all,  if  he  had  the 
masterpieces  of  ancient  art  constantly  before  his  eyes  as  we  have."  A  friendly 
correspondence  was  maintained  between  the  immortal  Italian  and  his  German 
contemporary,  and  in  his  own  country,  all  men,  from  the  emperor  to  the  peasant, 
delighted  to  do  honor  to  his  genius,  the  products  of  which  were  found  alike  in 
church  and  palace,  and  through  his  printed  designs  in  the  homes  of  the  humble 
poor. 

The  proud  old  imperial  city  of  Nuremberg  had  gathered  within  its  battle- 
mented  walls  a  multitude  of  men  who  were  distinguished  not  only  for  their  com- 
mercial enterprise  and  wealth,  but  many  of  whom  were  the  exponents  of  the  lit- 
erary and  artistic  culture  of  the  time.  Among  the  men  with  whom  Diirer  found 
congenial  companionship  were  Adam  Krafift,  the  sculptor  ;  Veit  Stoss,  whose 
exquisite  carvings  in  wood  may  reflect  in  some  measure  in  the  wild  luxuriance 
of  the  imagination  which  they  display,  the  restless,  "dare-devil"  spirit  with 
which  his  biographers  invest  him  ;  Peter  Vischer,  the  bronze  founder ;  and  last 
but  not  least,  Hans  Sachs,  the  cobbler  poet,  whose  quaint  rhymes  are  a  source  of 
delight  to  this  day,  and  were  a  mighty  force  in  the  great  work  of  the  Reforma- 
tion, by  which  the  fetters  of  mediaeval  traditions  and  ecclesiastical  abuse  were 
thrown  off  by  the  German  people. 

Of  the  personal  appearance  of  Diirer  at  this  time,  we  are  not  left  in  igno- 
rance. A  portrait  of  himself  from  his  own  hands  has  been  preserved  and  is  well 
known.  His  features  reveal  refinement  and  great  intellectuality,  united  with 
grace,  and  his  attire  shows  that  he  was  not  oblivious  to  matters  of  personal  adorn- 
ment. After  the  fashion  of  the  time,  his  hair  was  worn  in  long  and  graceful 
ringlets,  which  fell  in  heavy  masses  about  his  shoulders. 

The  first  six  years  which  followed  his  return  from  A^enice  were  almost  wholly 
given  to  painting,  and  his  productions  give  evidence  of  the  fact  that  he  had  dis- 
missed from  his  employment  the  retinue  of  assistants  and  apprentices,  w^hom  he 
had  employed  in  his  earlier  years.  From  this  period  date  most  of  his  great  mas- 
terpieces, which  are  still  preserved,  among  them  the  "  Adam  and  Eve,"  in  the 
Pitti  Palace  ;  the  "  Ten  Thousand  Martyrs  of  Nicomedia,"  in  the  Imperial  Gallery, 
at  Vienna  ;  the  "  Adoration  of  the  Trinity,"  at  the  Belvedere,  in  Vienna  ;  and  "  The 
Assumption  of  the  Virgin,"  the  original  of  which  was  destroyed  by  fire  more 
than  three  hundred  years  ago,  but  of  which  a  good  copy  is  preserved  at  Frank- 
fort. To  this  period  belong  the  portraits  of  Charlemagne  and  of  the  Emperor 
Sigismund,  which  are  preserved  in  the  National  German  Museum  at  Nuremberg. 

But  while  prosecuting  the  work  of  the  painter,  he  did  not  neglect  the  art  of 


ALBEET    DURER   VISITS    HANS    SACHS 

BY 

RICHARD    GROSS 


fall  of 
ained  tor  the  i  in   the 

IS  name 

•flhe 

' '  'i.i? 

.at  cu;  ^iclurc  lus  > 

f  lined  ;,....  _a   the  imn... . 
I  country,  all  men,  from  tl; 
>nor  to  his  genius,  the  products  of  which  were  lor  in 

I  palace,  and  through  his  printed  designs  in  the  homes  of  the  numble 

i"  ""■"  ■ 

The  proud  old  imperial  citv  of  Nuremberg  had  gathered  within  its  battle- 

mented  walls  a  multii  ere  distinguished  not  only  for  their  com- 

the  exponents  of  the  lit- 

I  wifli  \'.'liiitii    niiri  r   fdiinij 

ICC 


8H0A8   8HAH   BTISIV   aaaUQ    THHaJA 

ua\',  and  were  a  iniirfit\   t^    v    \n  Mi'  la- 

,■  '  , .     ■  ^^ 

asoflo  aflAHoifl  '  ^^ 

this  t.  left  irl  igno- 

lis  own  hands  has  been  preserved  and  is  well 
intellectuality,   united   with 

ifi  ni;il(i-i-s  (if  1  M  r-.i  )iv.il   riilorn- 

(ul 
Uout  his  shouh: 
■  ■       ;urn  from  \ 

lom  he 

his  great  mas- 

ind  Eve,"  in  the 

_  Imperial  Gallery, 

in  Vienna ;  and  "  The 

ved   by  fire  more 

ved  at  Frank- 

the  Emperor 

iseum  at  Nuremberg. 

the  work  ■  le  did  not  neglect  the  art  of 


rai: 

portrait  of  hir 

known. 

w            . 

grace,  n-. 

' 

ment. 

rin 

1  1 1 

.rnicn  .\ 

■  the' 

I^CHAl^OD   GnOBl 


hotogravuro,  HaiiCilacngl 


PRIKTSn  ON  THK  Hem  PRBBB 


ALBERT    DURER  235 

the  engraver,  and  in  151 1,  brought  out  in  complete  form  his  great  book  of  wood- 
cuts in  folio,  and  began  to  develop  that  marvellous  art  of  etching  which  is  in- 
dissolubly  connected  with  his  name.  Among  the  products  of  the  etcher's  needle 
which  attest  his  activity  in  this  direction  are  those  masterpieces  which  have  for 
centuries  been  at  once  the  delight  and  the  puzzle  of  artistic  minds  :  the  "  Melan- 
cholia," "The  Knight  and  the  Devil,"  and  "  St.  Jerome  in  his  Cell."  The  most 
reasonable  explanation  of  these  weird  fancies  is  that  they  were  intended  to  repre- 
sent in  allegorical  style  the  three  temperaments — the  melancholic,  the  sanguine, 
and  the  phlegmatic.  The  Diet  of  Augsburg,  which  was  convened  in  15 18, 
gave  Diirer  a  passing  opportunity  to  depict  the  lineaments  of  the  Emperor 
Maximilian,  who  gave  him  several  sittings,  and  who  manifested  great  interest  in 
the  painter.  The  death  of  the  emperor  in  the  following  year,  the  outbreak  of  an 
epidemic  in  Nuremberg,  together  with  the  coronation  of  Charles  V.  at  Aix-la- 
Chapelle,  led  Durer  to  undertake  a  journey  to  the  Low  Countries,  in  which  he 
was  accompanied  by  his  faithful  wife.  He  was  present  at  the  coronation  and 
was  one  of  the  distinguished  civilians  whose  appearance  added  dignity  to  the 
occasion.  His  diary,  in  which  he  recounts  his  experiences  upon  this  journey, 
and  which  is  accompanied  by  a  multitude  of  wayside  sketches,  is  still  preserved, 
and  contains,  besides  the  dry  entries  of  his  current  expenditures,  most  entertain- 
ing allusions  to  the  distinguished  people  whom  he  met,  and  who  received  him 
with  the  utmost  cordiality.  Intermingled  with  these  narrative  details  are  out- 
bursts of  feeling,  which  are  provoked  by  passing  political  and  ecclesiastical 
events,  in  which  he  took  a  profound  interest,  though  he  never  appears  to  have 
committed  himself  with  positive  openness  to  the  party  of  reform.  His  sympa- 
thies are,  however,  clearly  shown  by  his  writings,  as  well  as  by  his  works  of  art, 
to  have  been  with  the  Reformers,  and  he  lived  on  terms  of  intimacy  with  Eras- 
mus and  Melancthon,  of  both  of  whom  we  have  portraits  from  his  hand. 

Diirer  returned  from  the  Netherlands  in  1521,  about  the  middle  of  July,  and 
the  remaining  years  of  his  life  were  spent  in  the  prosecution  of  the  art  of  the  en- 
graver, in  painting,  and  in  the  efifort  to  elucidate  the  sciences  of  perspective,  ge- 
ometry, and  fortification,  upon  all  of  which  he  has  left  treatises. 

His  labors,  though  they  had  not  brought  with  them  great  wealth,  had  secured 
for  him  a  competency,  and  the  latter  years  of  his  life  were  devoted  more  and 
more  to  labors  which,  while  dignified,  did  not  tend  to  add  greatly  to  his  already 
magnificent  reputation.  These  labors  were  prosecuted  in  spite  of  ever-failing 
health.  While  in  the  Netherlands  he  had  contracted  a  malarial  fever,  the  effects 
of  which  clung  to  him,  in  spite  of  the  best  treatment  which  could  be  secured,  and 
left  him  the  wreck  of  his  former  self.  On  April  6,  1528,  death  suddenly  over- 
took him.  There  was  not  even  time  to  summon  his  friends  to  his  side  before 
his  spirit  had  fled.  The  city  which  had  been  his  home  from  childhood  was  filled 
with  mourning.  They  took  up  his  remains  and  gently  laid  them  to  rest  in  the 
burial  vault  of  his  wife's  family  in  the  graveyard  of  the  Church  of  St.  John,  where 
the  setting  sun  pours  its  last  glowing  beams  at  evening  over  the  low  Franconian 
hill-tops.     The  vault  has  since  been  changed  and  the  last  resting-place  of  the  re- 


236 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


mains  of  the  Raphael  of  the  North  is  a  lowly  mound,  reverently  approached  by 
all  who  visit  the  quaint  imperial  city,  upon  which  is  a  slab,  covered  with  a  bronze 
tablet  upon  which  are  the  words : 

Quicquid  Albert!  Dureri  Mortale 
Fuit  Sub  Hoc  Conditum  Tumulo. 
Emigravit  VIII  Idus  Aprilis,  MDXXVIII. 

"  Emigravit  is  the  inscription  on  the  tombstone  where  he  lies  ; 
Dead  he  is  not,  but  departed — for  the  artist  never  dies. 
Fairer  seems  the  ancient  city,  and  the  sunshine  seems  more  fair, 
That  he  once  has  trod  its  pavement,  that  he  once  has  breathed  its  air  !  " 


RUBENS 

By  Mrs.  Lee 
(1577-1640) 

"  TT  is  just  one  hundred  and  twenty  years 


to-day,"  said  a  young  artist  to  his  friend, 
as  he  stood  in  the  hall  of  St.  Mark,  at  Ven- 
ice, contemplating  the  noble  works  of  Titian. 
"  Time,  the  destroyer,  has  here  stayed  his 
hand ;  the  colors  are  as  vivid  and  as  fresh  as 
if  they  were  laid  on  but  yesterday.  Would 
that  my  old  friend  and  master,  Otho  Venius, 
was  here  !  At  least  I  will  carry  back  to  Ant- 
werp that  in  my  coloring  which  shall  prove 
to  him  that  I  have  not  played  truant  to  the 
art." 

"Just  one  hundred  and  twenty  years,"  re- 
peated he,  "since  Titian  was  born.  Venice 
was  then  in  its  glory,  but  now  it  is  all  fall- 
ing ;  its  churches  and  palaces  are  crumbling 
to  dust,  its  commerce  interrupted.  The  re- 
public continually  harassed  by  the  Porte,  and 
obliged  to  call  on  foreign  aid  ;  depressed  by  her  internal  despotism,  her  council 
of  ten,  and  state  inquisitors  ;  her  decline,  though  gradual,  is  sure  ;  3^et  the  splen- 
dor of  her  arts  remains,  and  the  genius  of  Titian,  her  favorite  son,  is  yet  in  the 
bloom  and  brilliancy  of  youth  ! " 

Such  was  the  enthusiastic  exclamation  of  Rubens,  as  he  contemplated  those 


RUBENS  237 

paintings  whicii  had  brought  him  from  Antwerp.  How  many  gifted  minds  spoke 
to  him  from  the  noble  works  which  were  before  him  !  The  three  BelHnis,  the 
founders  of  the  Venetian  school ;  Giorgione,  Titian,  and  Tintoretto.  Then  Paolo 
Veronese,  who,  though  born  at  Verona,  in  1537,  adopted  Venice  as  his  home, 
and  became  the  fellow-artist  of  Tintoretto,  and  the  disciple  of  Titian.  Porde- 
none,  too,  who  viewed  Titian  as  a  rival  and  an  enemy.  Palma  the  young,  and 
Palma  the  old,  born  in  1548,  and  the  Bassanos,  who  died  near  1627. 

All  these  were  present  to  the  eye  of  Rubens,  their  genius  embodied  on  the 
canvas  in  the  halls  of  St.  Mark.  "These,"  he  exclaimed,  "have  formed  the 
Venetian  school,  and  these  shall  be  my  study  !  " 

From  this  time,  the  young  artist  might  daily  be  seen  with  his  sheets  of  white 
paper,  and  his  pencil  in  his  hand.  A  few  strokes  preserved  the  outline  which  his 
memory  filled  up  ;  and  by  an  intuitive  glance,  his  genius  understood  and  appro- 
priated every  signal  beauty. 

In  Venice  he  became  acquainted  with  the  Archduke  Albert,  who  introduced 
him  to  the  Duke  of  Mantua,  whither  he  went  for  the  purpose  of  studying  the 
works  of  Julio  Romano.  From  thence  he  proceeded  to  Rome;  here  Raphael 
was  his  model,  and  Michael  Angelo  his  wonder.  He  devoted  himself  to  painting 
with  a  fervor  that  belongs  only  to  genius  ;  and  he  soon  proved  that,  whatever  he 
gained  by  ancient  study,  the  originality  of  his  own  conceptions  would  still  remain 
and  appear.  To  the  vivid  and  splendid  coloring  of  the  Venetian  school,  he  was 
perhaps  more  indebted  than  to  any  other  model.  The  affectionate  and  constant 
intercourse;  by  letters,  that  subsisted  between  Rubens  and  his  mother,  made  his 
long  residence  in  Italy  one  of  pleasure.  At  Rome  he  was  employed  to  adorn, 
by  his  paintings,  the  Church  of  Santa  Croce,  and  also  the  "  Chiesa  Nova." 

Rubens  had  been  originally  destined  by  his  mother  for  one  of  the  learned 
professions.  His  father  was  born  at  Antwerp,  and  held  the  honorable  office  of 
councillor  of  state.  When  the  civil  war  broke  out  he  repaired  to  Cologne, 
where  his  son,  Peter  Paul  Rubens,  was  born,  tie  died  soon  after  his  return  to 
Antwerp,  and  left  his  property  much  diminished  from  losses  occasioned  by  the 
civil  war.  The  mother  of  Rubens  put  him  early  to  the  best  schools,  where  he 
was  initiated  in  learning  and  discovered  a  taste  for  belles-lettres  ;  but  all  the  in- 
tervals of  necessary  study  were  devoted  to  drawing.  His  mother  perceiving  it,  de- 
termined to  indulge  his  inclination,  and  placed  him  in  the  studio  of  Van  Noort. 

The  correct  taste  of  the  scholar  soon  led  him  to  perceive  that  he  could  not 
adopt  this  artist's  style,  and  he  became  the  pupil  of  Otho  Vcnius.  Similarity  of 
thought  and  feeling  united  them  closely,  and  it  was  with  true  disinterestedness 
that  the  master  urged  his  pupil  to  cjuit  his  confined  circle  and  repair  to  Italy,  the 
great  school  of  art. 

Time  flew  rapidly  with  Rubens,  while  engaged  in  his  beloved  and  honorable 
pursuit  ;  he  looked  forward  to  the  period  when  he  might  return  to  Antwer])  and 
place  his  mother  in  her  former  affluence.  Nearly  seven  years  had  passed  since 
he  took  leave  of  her.  Of  late  he  thought  her  letters  had  been  less  cheerful  ;  she 
.spoke  of  her  declining  health,  of  her  earnest  hope  that  she  might  live  to  embrace 


238  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

him  once  more.  This  hint  was  enough  for  his  affectionate  heart.  He  imme- 
diately broke  off  all  his  engagements  and  prepared  to  return.  Everyone  knows 
what  impatience  is  created  when  one  first  begins  to  contemplate  home,  after  a 
long  absence,  and  the  heart  is  turned  toward  it.  "  Seven  years  absent?"  wrote 
Rubens  to  his  mother,  "  how  is  it  possible  I  have  lived  so  long  awa)'  from  you  ? 
It  is  too  long  ;  henceforth  I  will  devote  myself  to  your  happiness.  Antwerp 
shall  be  my  future  residence.  I  have  acquired  a  taste  for  horticulture  ;  our  little 
garden  shall  be  enlarged  and  cultivated,  and  our  home  will  be  a  paradise." 

What  are  human  anticipations  and  projects  !  the  day  before  he  was  to  quit 
Rome  he  received  a  letter  informing  him  that  his  mother  was  very  ill,  and  beg- 
ging him  to  return  wnth  all  speed.  With  breathless  haste  he  hurried  back,  with- 
out sleep  or  rest.  W^hen  he  reached  the  city  he  dared  not  make  any  inquiries. 
At  length  he  stood  before  the  paternal  mansion  ;  he  saw  the  gloom)^  tiles  and 
half-closed  window-shutters.  It  was  the  fall  of  the  trees.  He  observed  people 
going  in  and  out  at  the  door  ;  to  speak  was  impossible.  At  length  he  rushed  in 
and  heard  the  appalling  sentence,  "  Too  late,"  a  sentence  that  often  strikes  deso- 
lation to  the  human  heart.      His  mother  had  expired  that  morning. 

While  he  was  struggling  with  the  bitterness  of  sorrow,  he  met  with  Elizabeth 
Brants.  There  was  something  in  the  tone  of  her  voice  which  infused  tranquillity 
into  his  mind,  and  affection  came  in  a  new  form  to  assuage  his  loss.  She  was 
the  "  ladye  of  his  love,"  and  afterward  his  wife.  He  built  a  magnificent  house  at 
Antwerp,  with  a  saloon  in  form  of  a  rotunda,  which  he  ornamented  and  enriched 
with  antique  statues,  busts,  vases,  and  pictures  by  the  most  celebrated  painters. 
Thus  surrounded  by  the  gems  of  art,  he  devoted  himself  to  the  execution  of 
works  which  were  the  pride  of  his  native  country,  and  caused  honors  and  wealth 
to  be  heaped  upon  him. 

There  were  those  found  who  could  not  endure  the  splendor  of  his  success  ; 
these  calumniated.  There  were  others  who  tried  to  draw  him  into  visionary 
speculations.  A  chemist  offered  him  a  share  of  his  laboratory,  to  join  in  his 
search  for  the  philosopher's  stone.  He  carried  the  visionary  to  his  painting- 
room,  and  said,  "  The  offer  comes  too  late.  You  see  I  have  found  out  the  art  of 
making  gold  by  my  palette  and  pencils." 

Rubens  was  now  at  the  height  of  prosperity  and  happiness,  a  dangerous  emi- 
nence, and  one  on  which  few  are  permitted  to  rest.  A  second  time  his  heart  was 
pierced  with  sorrow  :  he  lost  his  young  wife,  Elizabeth,  a  few  years  after  their 
union.  Deep  as  was  his  sorrow,  he  had  yet  resolution  enough  to  feel  the  neces- 
sity of  exertion.  He  left  the  place  which  constantly  reminded  him  of  domestic 
enjoyment,  the  memory  of  which  contrasted  so  sadly  with  the  present  silence  and 
solitude,  and  travelled  for  some  time  in  Holland.  After  his  return,  he  received 
a  commission  from  Mar)^  de  Medici,  of  France,  to  adorn  the  palace  of  the  Lux- 
embourg. He  executed  for  this  purpose  a  number  of  paintings  at  Antwerp,  and 
instructed  several  pupils  in  his  art. 

At  this  time  Rubens  devoted  himself  wholly  to  painting,  and  scarcely  al- 
lowed himself  time  for  recreation.      He  considered  it  one  of  the  most  effectual 


RUBENS  239 

means  of  instruction,  to  allow  his  pupils  to  observe  his  method  of  using  his  paints. 
He  therefore  had  them  with  him  while  he  worked  on  his  large  pictures.  Teniers, 
Snyders,  Jordaens,  and  Vandyke  were  among  his  pupils — all  names  well  known. 

When  Rubens  had  executed  the  commission  given  him  by  Mary  de  Medici, 
wife  of  Henry  I\'.,  he  repaired  to  Paris  to  arrange  his  pictures  at  the  Luxem- 
bourg palace,  and  there  painted  two  more,  and  likewise  the  galleries,  representing 
passages  of  her  life. 

Here  he  became  acquainted  with  the  Duke  of  Buckingham,  as  that  nobleman 
was  on  his  way  to  Madrid  with  Prince  Charles.  On  his  return  to  Antwerp,  he 
was  summoned  to  the  presence  of  the  Infanta  Isabella,  who  had,  through  Buck- 
ingham, become  interested  in  his  character.  She  thought  him  worthy  of  a  polit- 
ical mission  to  the  court  of  Madrid,  where  he  was  most  graciously  received  by 
Philip.  While  at  Madrid  he  painted  four  pictures  for  the  convent  of  the  Car- 
melites, and  a  fine  portrait  of  the  king  on  horseback,  with  many  other  pictures  ; 
for  these  extraordinary  productions  he  was  richly  rewarded,  received  the  honor 
of  knighthood,  and  was  presented  with  the  golden  key. 

While  in  Spain,  Don  John,  Duke  of  Braganza,  who  was  afterward  king  of 
Portugal,  sent  and  invited  him  to  visit  him  at  Villa  Vitiosa,  the  place  of  his  resi- 
dence. Rubens,  perhaps,  might  at  this  time  have  been  a  little  dazzled  with  his 
uncommon  elevation.  He  was  now  Sir  /'rt/z/and  celebrated  all  over  Europe.  It 
was  proper  he  should  make  the  visit  as  one  person  of  high  rank  visits  another. 
His  preparations  were  great  to  appear  in  a  becoming  style,  and  not  to  shame  his 
noble  host.  At  length  the  morning  arrived,  and,  attended  by  a  numerous  train 
of  courteous  friends  and  hired  attendants,  the  long  cavalcade  began  the  journev. 
When  not  far  distant  from  Villa  Vitiosa,  Rubens  learned  that  Don  John  had 
sent  an  embassy  to  meet  him.  Such  an  honor  had  seldom  been  accorded  to  a 
private  gentleman,  and  Rubens  schooled  himself  to  receive  it  with  suitable  humil- 
ity and  becoming  dignity. 

He  put  up  at  a  little  distance  from  Villa  Vitiosa,  awaiting  the  arrival  of  the 
embassy  ;  finally  it  came,  in  the  form  of  a  single  gentleman,  who  civilly  told  him 
that  the  duke,  his  master,  had  been  obliged  to  leave  home  on  business  that  could 
not  be  dispensed  with,  and  therefore  must  deny  himself  the  pleasure  of  the  visit  ; 
but  as  he  had  probably  been  at  some  extra  expense  in  coming  so  far,  he  begged 
him  to  accept  of  fifty  pistoles  as  a  remuneration. 

Rubens  refused  the  pistoles,  and  could  not  forbear  adding  that  he  had 
"  brought  two  thousand  along  with  him,  which  he  had  meant  to  spend  at  his 
court  during  the  fifteen  days  he  was  to  spend  there." 

The  truth  was,  that  when  Don  John  was  informed  that  Rubens  was  coming 
in  the  style  of  a  prince  to  see  him,  it  was  wholly  foreign  to  his  plan  ;  he  was  a 
great  lover  of  painting,  and  had  wished  to  sec  him  as  an  artist.  He  therefore 
determined  to  prevent  the  visit. 

The  second  marriage  of  Rubens,  with  Helena  Forman,  was,  no  less  than  the 
first,  one  of  affection  ;  she  had  great  beauty,  and  became  a  motlcl  for  his  pencil. 
His  favor  with  the  great  continued.     Mary  de  Medici  visited  him  at  his  own. 


240  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

home  more  than  once;  and  the  Infanta  Isabella  was  so  much  satisfied  with  his 
mission  in  Spain,  that  she  sent  him  to  England,  to  sound  the  disposition  of  the 
government  on  the  subject  of  a  peace. 

Rubens  disclosed  in  this  embassy  his  diplomatic  talents  ;  he  first  appeared 
there  in  his  character  of  artist,  and  insensibly  won  upon  the  confidence  of 
Charles.  The  king  requested  him  to  paint  the  ceiling  of  the  banqueting-house 
at  Whitehall.  While  he  was  employed  upon  it,  Charles  frequently  visited  him 
and  criticised  the  work.  Rubens,  very  naturally  introducing  the  subject,  and 
finding,  from  the  tenor  of  his  conversation,  that  he  was  by  no  means  averse  to  a 
peace  with  Spain,  at  length  produced  his  credentials.  The  king  received  his  mis- 
sion most  graciously,  and  Rubens  returned  to  the  Netherlands  crowned  with 
honors  and  success. 

He  had  passed  his  fiftieth  year  when  his  health  began  to  fail,  and  he  was  at- 
tacked with  a  severe  fit  of  the  gout.  Those  who  have  witnessed  the  irritation 
attendant  upon  that  disorder  will  appreciate  the  perfect  harmonv  and  gentleness 
that  existed  between  Rubens  and  his  wife.  With  untiring  tenderness  she  de- 
voted herself  to  him,  and  was  ingenious  in  devising  alleviations  and  comforts. 

The  severe  attacks  of  Rubens'  disorder  debilitated  his  frame,  yet  he  contin- 
ued painting  at  his  easel  almost  to  the  last  ;  and,  amid  suffering  and' sickness, 
never  failed  in  giving  the  energy  of  intellect  to  his  pictures.  He  died  at  the  age 
of  sixty-three,  in  the  year  1640,  leaving  great  wealth.  The  pomp  and  circum- 
stance of  funeral  rite  can  onlv  be  of  consequence  as  showing  the  estimation  in 
which  a  departed  citizen  is  held.  Public  funeral  honors  were  awarded,  and  men 
of  every  rank  were  eager  to  manifest  their  respect  to  his  memory.  He  was 
buried  in  the  Church  of  St.  James,  at  Antwerp,  under  the  altar  of  his  private 
chapel,  which  was  decorated  with  one  of  his  own  noble  pictures. 


REMBRANDT* 

By  Elizabeth  Robins  Pennell 
(1606-1669) 

HERETIC  in  art  Rembrandt  was  to  many  of  his  Dutch  contempo- 
raries ;  to  us,  he  is  the  master,  supreme  alike  in  genius  and  accom- 
plishment. Because,  as  time  went  on,  he  broke  completely  from 
tradition  and  in  his  work  gave  full  play  to  his  originality,  his  pict- 
ures were  looked  at  askance  ;  because  he  chose  to  live  his  own  life, 
indifferent  to  accepted  conventions,  he  himself  was  misunderstood.  It  was  his 
cruel  fate  to  enjoy  prosperitv  and  popularity  in  his  earlier  years,  only  to  meet 
with  neglect  'in  his  old  age.  But  this  he  felt  probably  less  than  other  men  ;  he 
was  not  a  courtier,  with  Velasquez,  nor  vowed  to  worldly  success,  with  Rubens. 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


MARIE  DE  MEDICI  AT  THE  HOUSE  OF  RUBENS 


FLOKENT  WILLEMS 


ich  satisfied  with  h\> 
omid  the  disposition  ( 

his  diplomatic  t  rippen-'ed 

artist,   and  insensibly   \v 

'  ■  n  to  paint    "  i. 

.... ployed  upoi.     . 
Rubens,  very  natural 
of  his  conversation,  that  he  was 
.vi'i  pi.  .'iced  his  credentials.     1 

'^  I'.turned  to  the  Nci,.t    ,. 

piissed  his  tiftieth  year  when  his  hea  ,,  and  he  was  at- 

itli  a  severe  fit  of  the  p^out.     Those  liKssed  the  irritation 

M I i,.n  thai  disorder  "-I'^l  appreciate  Li,,    j..,..,,.,     ...wnony  and  gentleness 
;n   Rui  hi<:  wife.     With  untiring  tenderness  .she  de- 

li iu    I    ii,  and  was  ins  and  comforts. 


azaauii  ^io  5i8Uon  31it  ta  iokisk  aa  auiAM 


-IS. 


as 


Hwajjiv/  TWdiiOd'^.  rivate 


.n  \\a.3 


T?T  \^-:t:>  \ 


>u      .lit  j  ' 


id  accom- 
iiu.  rely  from 

:.._,,  his  pict- 

his  own  life, 

!t  was  his 

.tiici  j  .IS,  uiily  to  meet 

"lit   I'v  I  other  men  ;  he 

-s,  with  Rubens. 

'.mar  Hess. 


REMBRANDT 


241 


His   pleasure    and    his    reward,    lie  found  in    his  work.     So  long  as  easel   and 
canvas,  brushes  and  paints  were  left  to  him,  he  demanded  no  greater  happiness. 

In  Leyden,  a  town  already  made  famous  by  another  master,  Lucas  van  Ley- 
den,  Rembrandt  was  born  in  1606;  though  this 
date  has  been  disputed,  some  authorities  suggest- 
ing 1607,  others,  1608.  His  family  were  respect- 
able, if  not  distinguished,  burghers,  his  father,  Har- 
men  Gerritszoon,  being  a  miller  by  trade,  his  moth- 
er, Neeltjen  Willems  of  Zuitbroeck,  the  daughter 
of  a  baker.  Not  until  early  in  the  seventeenth 
century  did  permanent  surnames  become  common 
among  Dutchmen  ;  hitherto  children  had  been  giv- 
en their  father's,  in  addition  to  their  own  Christian 
name  ;  Rembrandt  for  many  years  was  known  as 
Rembrandt  Harmenzoon,  or  the  son  of  Harmen. 
But  the  miller,  to  be  in  the  growing  fashion,  had 
called  himself  Van  Ryn — of  the  Rhine — and  thus,  later  on,  Rembrandt  also 
signed  himself.  Harmen  was  well  -  to  -  do  ;  he  owned  houses  in  Leyden,  and 
beyond  the  walls,  gardens,  and  fields,  and  the  mill  where  Rembrandt,  because  he 
once  drew  a  mill,  was  supposed  to  have  been  born.  But  there  was  no  reason  for 
Neeltjen  to  move  from  a  comfortable  house  in  town  into  such  rustic  quarters, 
and  it  is  more  likely  that  Rembrandt's  birthplace  was  the  house  pointed  out  in 
the  Nordeinde  Street.  A  commercial  career  had  been  chosen  for  his  four  older 
brothers.  But  Harmen,  his  means  allowing  the  luxury,  decided  to  make  of  his 
fifth  son  a  man  of  letters  and  learning,  and  Rembrandt  was  sent  to  the  Univer- 
sity  of  Leyden.  That  letters,  however,  had  small  charm  for  him,  was  clear  from  the 
first.  Better  than  his  books  he  loved  the  engravings  of  Swanenburch,  better  still, 
the  pictures  of  Lucas  van  Leyden,  which  he  could  look  at  to  his  heart's  content 
on  gala  days,  when  the  Town  Hall,  where  they  hung,  was  thrown  open  to  the 
public.  His  hours  of  study  were  less  profitable  than  his  hours  of  recreation,  when 
he  rambled  in  the  country,  through  his  father's  estate,  and,  sometimes  as  far  as 
the  sea,  a  sketch-book,  the  chances  are,  for  sole  companion.  Certainly,  by  the 
time  he  was  fifteen,  so  strong  were  the  proofs  of  his  indifference  to  the  classics 
and  his  love  for  art,  that  his  father,  sacrificing  his  own  ambitions,  allowed  Rem- 
brandt to  leave  the  university  for  the  studio  of  Van  Swanenburch.  From  this 
day  forth,  his  life's  history  is  told  in  the  single  word — work  ;  his  indeed  was  the 
genius  of  industry. 

Van  Swanenburch  had  studied  in  Italy ;  but  his  own  painting,  to  judge  by  the 
few  examples  still  in  existence,  was  entirely  commonplace.  Three  years  were 
more  than  enough  to  be  passed  under  his  tuition.  At  the  end  of  the  third,  Rem- 
brandt went  to  Amsterdam,  and  there  entered  the  studio  of  Lastman.  His 
second  master  also  had  studied  in  Italy,  and  also  was  a  painter  of  mediocre  tal- 
ent, popular  in  his  own  times — the  Apelles  of  the  day,  he  was  called — but  re- 
membered now  chiefly  because  of  his  relations  to  his  pupil.     From  the  first, 

16 


242  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

Rembrandt,  even  if  obliged  to  paint  the  stock  subjects  of  the  day,  was  deter- 
mined to  treat  them  in  his  own  way,  and  not  to  follow  set  forms  that  happened 
to  be  adopted  in  the  schools.  He  used  real  men  and  women  for  models,  and 
painted  them  as  he  saw  them,  not  as  he  was  bidden  to  look  at  them  through  his 
teacher's  spectacles.  In  si.x  months  he  had  learned  at  least  one  thing,  that  Last- 
man  had  nothing  more  to  teach  him.  The  man  of  genius  must  ever  be  his  own 
master,  though  he  remain  the  hard-working  student  all  his  days.  Back  to  Ley- 
den  and  to  his  father's  house,  Rembrandt  had  not  returned  to  lead  a  life  of  idle- 
ness. He  worked  tremendously  in  these  early  years.  Even  needed  models  he 
found  in  the  members  of  his  family  :  he  has  made  the  face  of  his  mother  as  fa- 
miliar as  that  of  a  friend  ;  his  own,  with  the  heavy  features,  the  thick,  bushy 
hair,  the  small  intelligent  eyes,  between  them  the  vertical  line,  fast  deepening 
on  the  fine  forehead,  he  drew  and  etched  and  painted,  again  and  again.  More 
elaborate  compositions  he  also  undertook.  As  in  his  maturity,  it  was  to  the  Bi- 
ble he  turned  for  suggestions  :  Saint  Paul  in  prison,  Samson  and  Delilah,  the 
Presentation  in  the  Temple — these  were  the  themes  then  in  vogue  which  he  pre- 
ferred, rendering  them  with  the  realism  which  distinguished  his  later,  more  fa- 
mous Samsons  and  Abrahams  and  Christs,  making  them  the  motive  for  a  fine 
arrangement  of  color,  for  a  striking  study  of  light  and  shadow.  A  pleasant  pict- 
ure one  can  fancy  of  his  life  at  this  period  ;  he  was  with  his  own  people,  for 
whom  his  love  was  tender  ;  busy  with  brush,  pencil,  and  etching-needle  ;  he  was 
strengthening  his  powers  of  observation,  developing  and  perfecting  his  style, 
occasionally  producing  work  that  won  for  him  renown  in  Leyden  ;  and,  gradu- 
ally, he  gathered  round  him  a  small  group  of  earnest  fellow-workers,  chief 
among  them  Lievens,  Gerard  Dou,  and  Van  Vliet,  the  last  two,  though  but 
slightly  his  juniors,  looking  up  to  him  as  master.  These  were  the  years  of  his 
true  apprenticeship. 

Leyden,  however,  was  not  the  best  place  for  a  young  painter  who  had  his  fort- 
unes to  make.  It  was  essentially  a  university  town  ;  interest  was  concentrated 
upon  letters ;  art  was  but  of  secondary  consideration.  It  was  different  in  Am- 
sterdam, the  great  commercial  centre  of  Holland.  There,  all  was  life  and  activ- 
ity  and  progress  ;  there,  was  money  to  be  spent,  and  the  liberal  patron  willing  to 
lavish  it  upon  the  artist.  Holland  just  then  was  in  the  first  flush  of  prosperity 
and  patriotism,  following  upon  her  virtual  independence  from  Spain.  Not  a 
citizen  but  glowed  with  self-respect  at  the  thought  of  the  victory  he  had,  in  one 
way  or  another,  helped  to  win  ;  the  state,  as  represented  by  the  good  burghers, 
was  supreme  in  every  man's  mind.  It  was  natural  that  individuals  and  corpora- 
tions alike  should  seek  to  immortalize  their  greatness  by  means  of  the  painter's 
art,  which,  in  Holland,  had  long  since  ceased  to  be  a  monopoly  of  the  church. 
Hence  the  age  became  essentially  one  of  portrait-painting.  Many  were  the 
painters  whose  portraits  had  already  achieved  distinction.  De  Keyser  was  busy 
in  Amsterdam  ;  a  far  greater  genius,  Franz  Hals,  but  fifteen  years  Rembrandt's 
senior,  was  creating  his  masterpieces  in  The  Hague  and  Harlem.  It  was  as  in- 
evitable that  Rembrandt  should  turn  to  portraiture,  as  that   he  should  find  com- 


REMBRANDT  243 

missions  less  numerous  in  Leyden  than  in  Amsterdam.  Often  in  the  latter  town 
his  services  were  required  ;  so  often,  indeed,  that  at  last,  about  1631,  when  he 
was  just  twenty-five,  he  settled  there  permanently  and  set  up  a  studio  of  his  own. 

Success  was  his  from  the  start.  Sitter  after  sitter  sought  him  out  in  his 
house  on  the  Bloemgracht ;  the  most  distinguished  men  in  the  town  hastened  to 
patronize  him.  His  work  was  liked  by  the  burghers  whom  he  painted,  its 
strength  was  felt  by  artists,  whose  canvases  soon  showed  its  influence.  Admir- 
ers crowded  to  his  studio.  He  had  not  been  in  Amsterdam  a  twelvemonth 
when,  before  he  was  yet  twenty-six,  he  was  entrusted  with  an  order  of  more  than 
usual  importance.  This  was  the  portrait  of  Dr.  Tulp  and  his  class  of  surgeons : 
the  famous  "  Lesson  in  Anatomy  "  now  in  the  Gallery  at  The  Hague.  The  sub- 
ject at  the  time  was  very  popular.  Many  artists,  De  Keyser  among  others,  had 
alreadv,  in  painting  prominent  surgeons,  placed  them  around  the  subject  they 
were  dissecting ;  indeed,  this  was  the  arrangement  insisted  upon  by  the  surgeons 
themselves,  and,  as  there  seems  to  have  been  no  limit  to  their  vanity,  "  Lessons 
in  Anatomy"  were  almost  as  plentiful  in  Holland  as  "Madonnas"  in  Umbria. 
Rembrandt  in  his  composition  was  simply  adhering  to  accepted  tradition.  It  is 
true  that  he  instilled  life  into  a  group  hitherto,  on  other  painters'  canvases,  stiff 
and  perfunctory  ;  but,  though  the  picture  was  a  wonderful  production  for  a  man 
of  his  years,  it  is  not  to  be  ranked  with  his  greatest  work. 

Commissions  now  poured  in  still  faster.  It  was  at  this  time  he  painted 
several  of  his  best  known  portraits  :  the  "  Master  Shipbuilder  and  his  Wife,"  at 
present  in  Buckingham  Palace  ;  that  simply  marvellous  old  woman  at  the  Na- 
tional Gallery  in  London,  made  familiar  to  everyone  by  countless  photographs 
and  other  reproductions  ;  the  man  in  ruff  and  woman  in  coif  at  the  Bruns- 
wick Museum  ;  and  a  score  of  others  scarce  less  important.  With  increasing 
popularity,  he  was  able  to  command  his  own  prices,  so  that  only  a  part  of  his 
time  was  it  necessary  for  him  to  devote  to  the  portraits  which  were  his  chief 
source  of  income.  During  the  leisure  he  reserved,  he  painted  biblical  subjects, 
ever  his  delight,  and  made  etchings  and  drawings,  to-day  the  most  prized  treas- 
ures in  the  world's  great  galleries.  As  in  Leyden,  he  drew  about  him  students  ; 
a  few,  notably  Ferdinand  Bol  and  Christophe  Paudiss,  destined,  in  their  turn,  to 
gain  name  and  fame.  Indifferent  to  social  claims  and  honors — an  indifference 
the  burghers,  his  patrons,  found  it  hard  to  forgive,  his  one  amusement  was  in  col- 
lecting pictures  and  engravings,  old  stuffs  and  jewels,  and  every  kind  of  dric-k- 
brac,  until  his  house  in  Amsterdam  was  a  veritable  museum.  This  amusement 
later  was  to  cost  him  dear. 

Four  years  after  the  "  Lesson  in  Anatomy  "  was  painted,  when  he  was  at  the 
height  of  prosperity,  in  1634,  he  married  Saskia  van  Uylenborch,  the  Saskia  of 
so  many  an  etching  and  picture.  She  was  of  a  good  Frisian  family,  and  brought 
with  her  a  dowry  of  no  mean  proportions.  Rembrandt's  marriage  made  small 
changes  in  his  way  of  living.  Isto  the  society,  so  ready  to  receive  him,  he  never 
went,  not  even  now  that  he  had  a  wife  to  introduce.  It  bored  him,  and  he  was  no 
toady  to  waste  his  time  fawning  upon  possible  patrons.     "  When  I  desire,  to  rest 


214  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

my  spirit,  I  do  not  seek  honors,  but  liberty,"  was  his  explanation.  The  compan- 
ionship of  artists  he  always  welcomed  ;  sometimes  he  visited  the  humbler  burgh- 
ers, whose  ways  were  as  simple  as  his  own  ;  sometimes  he  sought  the  humblest 
classes  of  all,  because  of  their  picturcsqueness,  and  his  contemporaries  took  him 
to  task  for  his  perverted  taste  for  low  company.  The  truth  is  that  always  he  de- 
voted himself  solely  and  wholly  to  his  art  ;  the  only  difference,  once  he  was  mar- 
ried, was  that,  when  he  sat  at  his  easel  all  day  or  over  his  copperplate,  and  sketch- 
book all  evening,  Saskia  was  with  him.  She  shared  all  his  interests,  all  his  am- 
bitions ;  she  had  no  will  but  his.  During  his  working  hours,  she  was  his  model, 
obedient  to  his  call.  She  never  tired  of  posing  for  him,  nor  he  of  painting  her  : 
now  simply  as  Saskia,  now  as  Delilah  feasting  with  Samson,  as  Susanna  sur- 
prised by  the  Elders,  as  the  Jewish  Betrothed  at  her  toilet.  Sometimes  he  repre- 
sented her  alone,  sometimes  with  himself  at  her  side  ;  once,  in  the  famous  Dres- 
den portrait,  on  his  knee,  as  if  to  proclaim  the  love  they  bore  for  one  another. 
And  he,  who  could  render  faithfully  the  ways  of  the  beggar,  the  austere  black 
of  the  burgher,  for  himself  and  Saskia  found  no  masquerading  too  gay  or  ex- 
travagant. In  inventing  costumes  for  their  own  portraits,  he  gave  his  exuberant 
fancy  free  play :  in  gorgeous  embroidered  robes,  waving  plumes,  and  priceless 
gems  they  arrayed  themselves,  until  even  the  resources  of  his  collection  were  ex- 
hausted :  the  same  rich  mantle,  the  same  jewels  appear,  and  reappear  in  picture 
after  picture. 

Rembrandt's  short  married  years  were  happy,  though  not  without  their  sor- 
rows. Of  Saskia's  five  children,  four  died  in  infancy  ;  the  fifth,  Titus,  was  not  a 
year  old  when,  in  1642,  the  end  came  for  Saskia,  and  Rembrandt,  who  had  just 
reached  his  thirty-seventh  year,  was  left  in  his  great  house  alone  with  an  infant 
son  and  his  pupils.  Her  confidence  in  him  is  shown  by  her  will,  in  which  the 
inheritance  of  Titus  is  left  in  the  father's  charge,  though  already  Rembrandt's 
affairs  must  have  given  signs  of  coming  complications. 

Much  of  his  best  work  remained  to  be  done,  but  after  Saskia's  death  his 
worldly  fortunes  and  his  popularity  never  again  touched  such  high-water  mark. 
The  reason  for  this  is  not  far  to  seek.  During  all  these  years,  Rembrandt's  pow- 
ers had  matured,  his  methods  broadened,  and  his  individuality  strengthened. 
With  each  new  canvas,  his  originality  became  more  conspicuous.  It  was  not 
only  that  the  world  of  nature,  and  not  imagination,  supplied  his  models.  Many 
of  the  Dutch  painters  now  were  no  less  realists  than  he.  It  was  not  only  that 
he  solved  certain  problems  of  chiaro  osciiro,  there  were  men,  like  Lievens,  who 
were  as  eager  as  he  in  the  study  of  light  and  shadow.  But  Rembrandt  brought 
to  his  every  experiment  an  independence  that  startled  the  average  man.  He 
painted  well  because  he  saw  well.  If  no  one  else  saw  things  as  he  did,  the  loss 
was  theirs.  But  he  paid  for  his  keener  vision  ;  because  he  did  not  paint  like 
other  artists,  his  methods  were  mistrusted.  To  be  misunderstood  is  the  penalty 
of  genius.  The  picture  which,  of  all  his  work,  is  now  the  most  famous,  marks 
the  turn  in  the  tide  of  his  affairs.  Shortlv  before  Saskia's  death,  he  had  been 
com.missioned  to  paint  a  portrait  group  of  Banning  Cock  and  the  military  com- 


.J-*  .L  1  11'.  .'i-iJ> 

compan- 

■St 

-;,  and  Ii  a 

r- 

ii- 

Il- 
ls.     During  his  workiii  i, 
^liic  never  tired  ot  posins:  for  h.i.i.  ,  : 

^kia,  now  as  Dellkih  feasting  with    .- ,  .,     , 

s,  as  the  Jewish  Betrothed  at  her  toilet.     Somet 

Limes  with  himself  at  her  side  ;  once,  in  the  famous  Dres- 
puitiau,  on  nio  Knee,  as  if  to  proclaim  the  love  they  bore  for  one  another. 
-v;,:l  he,  who  could  render  faithfully  the  ways  of  the  beggar,  the  austere  black 
of  the  burgher,  for  himseli  L=;kia  found  no  masquerading  too  gay  or  ex- 

it.    In  inventir  portraits,  he  gave  his  exuberant 


oiauTg  a'TaMAaaMaa  ta  aauaHgioK^oo 


Jaaaaj  aHaKAzajA-aHijoaA  it 

aib  pi;,  .:  win,  in  which  the 

...   aice  of      .  .....  .      ...   .  -  '    .  -       .ilreadv   Rembrandt's 

aifairs  must  have  given  signs  of  coming  complications. 

Much  of  his  best  work  remained  to  be  done,   but  after  Saskia's  death  his 

worldly  for"-      -     ■  '  '   '     '    ■  -   '    •     -lin  touched  such  high-water  mark. 

The  reason  _       'ig  all  thc^e  verrs.  Rembrandt'--;  novr- 

ers  had  m.v  ened,  and  his 

With  e  ecamc  mor  -  not 

"V.-  thai  inc  \'  "'   '■'■  ■  Many 

he  Dutch  I  .  only  that 

-olved  carta  tro  oscuro,  there  were  men,  like  Lievens,  who 

eager  as  lie  ui  fiut  Rembrandt  brought 

ir  experimt  •'        •  an.     He 

i  because  h<  \,  the  loss 

But  he  paid  for  A  ■  paint  like 

methods  .  ^  the  penalty 

'.  icture  wiiiM-,  ui  a;i  lamous,  marks 

ie  of  his  affairs.     '  ith,  he  had  been 

lint  a  portrait  group  of  Bannintr  Cock  and  the  military  com- 


A 

I 
'I 


REMBRANDT  245 

pany  which  he  commanded.  These  portrait  groups  of  the  military  corporations 
rivalled  in  popularity  the  "  Lessons  in  Anatomy."  Each  member,  or  officer, 
paid  to  be  included  in  the  composition,  and,  as  a  rule,  a  stilT,  formal  picture,  with 
each  individual  posed  as  for  a  photograph,  was  the  result.  Rembrandt,  appar- 
ently, was  in  nowise  restricted  when  he  undertook  the  work  for  Banning  Cock, 
and  so,  instead  of  the  stupid,  hackneyed  arrangement,  he  made  of  the  portrait  of 
the  company  a  picture  of  armed  men  marching  forth  to  beating  of  drums  and 
waving  of  banners,  "The  Night  Watch,"  as  it  must  ever  be  known — more  ac- 
curately, "  The  Sortie  of  the  Company  of  Banning  Cock  " — now  in  the  Ryks  Mu- 
seum of  Amsterdam.  With  the  men  for  whom  it  was  painted,  it  proved  a 
failure.  The  grouping,  the  arrangement  displeased  them.  Many  of  the  com- 
pany were  left  in  deep  shadow,  which  was  not  the  privilege  for  which  they  had 
agreed  to  pay  good  money.  Rembrandt  was  not  the  man  to  compromise. 
After  this  many  burghers,  who  cared  much  for  themselves  and  their  own  faces, 
and  not  in  the  least  for  art,  were  afraid  to  entrust  their  portraits  to  him  lest  their 
importance  might  be  sacrificed  to  the  painter's  effects.  Certain  it  is  that  six 
years  later,  in  1648,  when  the  independence  of  Holland  was  formally  recognized 
at  the  Congress  of  Westphalia,  though  Terburg  and  Van  der  Heist  celebrated  the 
event  on  canvas,  Rembrandt's  services  were  not  secured.  Good  friends  were 
left  to  him — men  of  intelligence  who  appreciated  his  strong  individuality  and  the 
great  originality  of  his  work.  Banning  Cock  himself  was  not  among  the  discon- 
tented. A  few  leading  citizens,  like  Dr.  Tulp  and  the  Burgomeister  Six,  were 
ever  his  devoted  patrons.  Artists  still  gathered  about  him  ;  pupils  still  crowded 
to  his  studio  ;  Nicolas  Maes,  De  Gelder,  Kneller  among  them.  Many  of  his 
finest  portraits — those  of  Hendrickje  Stoffels,  of  his  son,  of  himself  in  his  old  age, 
of  the  Burgomeister  Six,  above  all,  his  masterpiece,  "  The  Syndics  of  the  Guild 
of  Clothmakers,"  now  in  Amsterdam  ;  many  of  his  finest  etchings,  the  little  land- 
scapes, the  famous  "  Hundred  Guilder  Print,"  "  Christ  Healing  the  Sick,"  belong 
to  this  later  period.  There  was  no  falling  off,  but  rather  an  increase,  in  his 
powers,  despite  the  clouds  that  darkened  his  years  of  middle  age. 

Of  these  clouds,  the  darkest  was  due  to  his  financial  troubles.  Rembrandt 
had  made  large  sums  of  money  ;  Saskia's  dowry  had  been  by  no  means  small. 
But  he  also  spent  lavishly.  He  had  absolutely  no  business  capacity.  Once  he 
was  accused  of  miserliness  ;  that  he  would  at  times  lunch  on  dry  bread  and  a 
herring  served  as  reproach  against  him  ;  there  was  a  story  current  that  his  pupils 
would  drop  bits  of  paper  painted  to  look  like  money  in  order  to  see  him  stoop 
to  pick  them  up.  Both  charges  are  too  foolish  to  answer  seriously.  When  he 
was  at  work,  it  mattered  little  to  him  what  he  ate,  so  that  he  was  not  disturbed  ; 
who  would  not  stoop  to  pick  up  coins  apparently  scattered  on  the  Hoor  ?  The 
money  he  devoted  to  his  collection  is  sufficient  to  show  how  small  a  fancy  he  had 
for  hoarding  ;  upon  it  a  princely  fortune  had  been  squandered.  To  his  own  peo- 
ple in  Leyden,  when  times  were  hard,  he  had  not  been  slow  to  hold  out  a  gen- 
erous hand.  It  was  because  he  was  not  enough  of  a  miser,  because  he  gave  too 
little  heed  to  business  matters,  that  difficulties  at  KiiLith  overwhelmed  him.      It 


246  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

is  too  sad  a  story  to  tell  in  detail.  Perhaps  the  beginning  was  when  he  bought  a 
house  for  which  he  had  not  the  ready  money  to  pay,  and  borrowed  a  large  sum 
for  the  purpose.  More  and  more  involved  became  his  affairs.  In  time  his  credi- 
tors grew  clamorous,  and  at  length  the  blow  fell  when,  in  1657,  he  was  declared 
bankrupt.  The  collection  of  years,  the  embroidered  mantles  and  draperies,  the 
jewels  with  which  Saskia  had  been  so  gayly  decked,  the  plumes  and  furs  and  gor- 
geous robes  in  which  he  himself  had  masqueraded,  the  armor  and  plate,  the  en- 
gravings and  pictures  which  had  filled  his  house — all  were  sold.  He,  the  master, 
had,  at  the  age  of  fifty-one,  to  begin  life  anew  as  if  he  were  still  but  the  apprentice. 

In  the  midst  of  his  troubles  and  losses,  Hendrickje  Stoffels,  whose  portrait 
hangs  in  the  Louvre,  was  the  friend  who  cheered  and  comforted  him.  She  had 
been  his  servant ;  afterward  she  lived  with  him  as  his  wife,  though  legally  they 
were  not  married.  To  Titus,  as  to  her  own  children,  she  was  ever  a  tender 
mother,  and  Titus,  in  return,  seems  to  have  loved  her  no  less  well.  In  the  end, 
they  together  took  Rembrandt's  business  interests  into  their'own  hands,  the  son, 
probably,  using  his  inheritance  in  the  enterprise.  Renting  a  house  in  their  own 
name,  they  became  his  print  and  picture  dealers. 

But  as  time  went  on,  Rembrandt's  work  brought  lower  and  lower  prices,  and 
he,  himself,  the  last  two  years  of  his  life,  was  almost  forgotten.  Though  he  still 
lived  in  Amsterdam,  the  town  from  which  he  had  so  seldom  journeyed,  and  then 
never  far,  he  had  fallen  into  such  obscurity,  that  report  now  established  him  in 
Stockholm  as  painter  to  the  King  of  Sweden,  now  in  Hull,  or  Yarmouth.  In 
his  own  family  nothing  but  sorrow  was  in  store  for  him.  Hendrickje  died,  prob- 
ably about  1664,  and  he  was  once  more  alone  ;  and  next  he  lost  Titus,  who  then 
had  been  married  but  a  few  short  months. 

Fortunately  for  Rembrandt,  he  did  not  long  survive  them.  In  1669,  at  the 
age  of  sixty-two,  his  release  came.  He  was  buried  in  the  West  Church,  quietly 
and  simply.  Thirteen  florins  his  funeral  cost,  and  even  this  small  expense  had 
to  be  met  by  his  daughter-in-law.  When  an  inventory  of  his  possessions  was 
taken,  these  were  found  to  consist  of  nothing  but  his  own  wardrobe  and  his 
painter's  tools. 

But  better  than  a  mere  fortune,  his  work  he  left  as  an  heirloom  for  all  time ; 
his  drawings,  not  the  least  among  them  without  the  stamp  of  his  genius  ;  his 
prints,  still  unsurpassed,  though  it  was  he  who  first  developed  the  possibilities  of 
etching  ;  his  pictures,  "painted  with  light,"  as  Fromentin  has  said.  His  subjects 
he  may  have  borrowed  from  the  fashions  and  traditions  of  the  time  ;  certain  man- 
nerisms of  technique  and  arrangement  his  pupils  may  have  copied.  But  for  all 
that,  his  work  belongs  to  no  special  school  or  group  ;  like  all  the  world's  great 
masterpieces,  whether  produced  in  Spain  by  a  Velasquez,  in  Venice  by  a  Titian, 
in  England  by  a  Whistler,  it  stands  alone  and  supreme. 


G^4<^  (^lLe^^^fh}f^^^ 


WILLIAM    HOGARTH 


247 


WILLIAM   HOGARTH 

(i 697-1 764) 


I 


i: 


J^ 


f^. 


Aft*^ 


WAS    born,"  says  Hogarth,  in  his  Me- 
moirs of  himself,  "  in  the  city  of  Lon- 
don, November  10,  1697.     My  father's  pen, 
like   that  of  many  authors,  did   not  enable 
him  to  do  more  than  put  me  in  a  way  of 
shifting  for  myself.     As  I   had  naturally  a 
good  eye  and  a  fondness  for  drawing,  shows 
of  all    sorts  gave    me  uncommon   pleasure 
when  an  infant  ;  and  mimicry,  common  to 
all    children,  was    remarkable    in    me.     An 
early  access  to  a  neighboring  painter  drew 
my  attention  from  play,  and  I  was,  at  every 
possible  opportunity,  employed  in    making 
drawings.      I  picked  up  an  acquaintance  of 
the  same  turn,  and  soon  learned  to  draw  the 
alphabet  with  great  correctness.     My  exer- 
cises when  at  school  were  more  remarkable 
for  the  ornaments  which  adorned  them  than    for   the   exercise  itself.      In  the 
former  I  soon  found  that  blockheads  with  better  memories  could  much  surpass 
me,  but  for  the  latter  I  was  particularly  distinguished." 

To  this  account  of  Hogarth's  childhood  we  have  only  to  add  that  his  father, 
an  enthusiastic  and  laborious  scholar,  who,  like  many  of  his  craft,  owed  little  to 
the  favor  of  fortune,  consulted  these  indications  of  talent  as  well  as  his  means 
would  allow,  and  bound  his  son  apprentice  to  a  silver-plate  engraver.  But  Ho- 
garth aspired  after  something  higher  than  drawing  ciphers  and  coats-of-arms  ;  and 
before  the  expiration  of  his  indentures  he  had  made  himself  a  good  draughtsman, 
and  obtained  considerable  knowledge  of  coloring.  It  was  his  ambition  to  be- 
come distinguished  as  an  artist ;  and  not  content  with  being  the  mere  copier  of 
other  men's  productions,  he  sought  to  combine  the  functions  of  the  painter  with 
those  of  the  engraver,  and  to  gain  the  power  of  delineating  his  own  ideas  and 
the  fruits  of  his  acute  observation.  He  has  himself  explained  the  nature  of  his 
views  in  a  passage  which  is  worth  attention  : 

"Many  reasons  led  me  to  wish  that  1  could  find  the  shorter  path — fix  forms 
and  characters  in  my  mind — and  instead  of  copying  the  lines,  try  to  read  the  lan- 
guage, and,  if  possible,  find  the  grammar  of  the  art  by  bringing  into  one  focus 
the  various  observations  I  have  made,  and  then  trying  by  my  power  on  the  can- 
vas how  far  ni)-  plan  enabled  me  to  combine  and  ajiply  them  to  practice.  For 
this  purpose  I  considered  what  various  ways,  and  to  what  different  purposes,  the 


248  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

memory  might  be  applied,  and  fell  upon  one  most  suitable  to  my  situation  and 
idle  disposition ;  laying  it  down  fust  as  an  axiom,  that  he  who  could  by  any 
means  acquire  and  retain  in  his  memory  perfect  ideas  of  the  subjects  he  meant 
to  draw,  would  have  as  clear  a  knowledge  of  the  figure  as  a  man  who  can  write 
freely  hath  of  the  twenty-five  letters  of  the  alphabet  and  their  infinite  combina- 
tions." Acting  on  these  principles,  he  improved,  by  constant  exercise,  his  natural 
powers  of  observation  and  recollection.  We  find  him  roaming  through  the 
country,  now  at  Yarmouth  and  again  at  Queenborough,  sketching  everywhere. 
In  his  rambles  among  the  motley  scenes  of  London  he  was  ever  on  the  watch  for 
striking  features  or  incidents ;  and  not  trusting  entirely  to  memory,  he  was  ac- 
customed, when  any  face  struck  him  as  being  peculiarly  grotesque  or  expressive, 
to  sketch  it  on  his  thumb-nail,  to  be  treasured  up  on  paper  at  his  return  home. 

For  some  time  after  the  expiration  of  his  apprenticeship,  Hogarth  continued 
to  practise  the  trade  to  which  he  was  bred  ;  and  his  shop-bills,  coats-of-arms,  en- 
gravings upon  tankards,  etc.,  have  been  collected  with  an  eagerness  quite  dispro- 
portionate to  their  value.  Soon  he  procured  employment  in  furnishing  frontis- 
pieces and  designs  for  the  booksellers.  The  most  remarkable  of  these  are  the 
plates  to  an  edition  of  "  Hudibras,"  published  in  1 726  ;  but  even  these  are  of  no 
distinguished  merit.  About  1728  he  began  to  seek  employment  as  a  portrait- 
painter.  Most  of  his  performances  were  small  family  pictures,  containing  several 
figures,  which  he  calls  "  Conversation  Pieces,"  from  twelve  to  fifteen  inches  high. 
These  for  a  time  were  very  popular,  and  his  practice  was  considerable,  as  his  price 
was  low.  His  life-size  portraits  are  few  ;  the  most  remarkable  are  that  of  Cap- 
tain Coram,  in  the  "  Foundling  Hospital,"  and  that  of  Garrick  as  King  Richard 
HI.,  which  is  reproduced  in  the  present  volume.  But  his  practice  as  a  portrait- 
painter  was  not  lucrative,  nor  his  popularity  lasting.  Although  many  of  his  like- 
nesses were  strong  and  characteristic,  in  the  representation  of  beauty,  elegance, 
and  high-breeding  he  was  little  skilled.  The  nature  of  the  artist  was  as  uncourtly 
as  his  pencil.  When  Hogarth  obtained  employment  and  eminence  of  another 
sort  through  his  wonderful  prints,  he  abandoned  portrait-painting,  with  a  growl 
at  the  jealousy  of  his  professional  brethren  ;  and  the  vanity  and  blindness  of  the 
public. 

March  25,  1729,  Hogarth  contracted  a  stolen  marriage  with  the  only 
daughter  of  the  once  fashionable  painter,  Sir  James  Thornhill.  The  father,  for 
some  time  implacable,  relented  at  last ;  and  the  reconciliation,  it  is  said,  was 
much  forwarded  by  his  admiration  of  the  "  Harlot's  Progress,"  a  series  of  six 
prints,  commenced  in  1731  and  published  in  1734.  The  novelty  as  well  as  merit 
of  this  series  of  prints  won  for  them  extraordinary  popularity  ;  and  their  success 
encouraged  Hogarth  to  undertake  a  similar  history  of  the  "  Rake's  Progress,"  in 
eight  prints,  which  appeared  in  1735.  The  third,  and  perhaps  the  most  popular, 
as  it  is  the  least  objectionable  of  these  pictorial  novels,  "Marriage  a  la  Mode," 
was  not  engraved  till  1745. 

The  merits  of  these  prints  were  sufficiently  intelligible  to  the  public :  their 
originality  and  boldness  of  design,  the  force  and   freedom  of  their  execution, 


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WILLIAM    HOGARTH  249 

rough  as  it  is,  won  for  them  an  extensive  popularity  and  a  rapid  and  continued 
sale.  The  "  Harlot's  Progress  "  was  the  most  eminently  successful,  from  its  nov- 
elty rather  than  from  its  superior  excellence.  Twelve  hundred  subscribers' 
names  were  entered  for  it ;  it  was  dramatized  in  several  forms ;  and  we  may 
note,  in  illustration  of  the  difference  of  past  and  present  manners,  that  fan- 
mounts  were  engraved  containing  miniature  copies  of  the  six  plates.  The  mer- 
its of  the  pictures  were  less  obvious  to  the  few  who  could  afford  to  spend  large 
sums  on  works  of  art,  and  Hogarth,  too  proud  to  let  them  go  for  prices  much 
below  the  value  which  he  put  upon  them,  waited  for  a  long  time,  and  waited  in 
vain,  for  a  purchaser.  At  last  he  determined  to  commit  them  to  public  sale ; 
but  instead  of  the  common  method  of  auction,  he  devised  a  new  and  complex 
plan  with  the  intention  of  excluding  picture-dealers,  and  obliging  men  of  rank 
and  wealth  who  wished  to  purchase  to  judge  and  bid  for  themselves.  The 
scheme  failed,  as  might  have  been  expected.  Nineteen  of  Hogarth's  best  pict- 
ures, the  "  Harlot's  Progress,"  the  "  Rake's  Progress,"  the  "  Four  Times  of  the 
Day,"  and  "Strolling  Actresses  Dressing  in  a  Barn"  produced  only  £\2']  ys., 
not  averaging  ^22  lo^.  each.  The  "Harlot's  Progress"  was  purchased  by  Mr. 
Beckford  at  the  rate  of  fourteen  guineas  a  picture  ;  five  of  the  series  perished  in 
the  fire  at  Fonthill.  The  "  Rake's  Progress  "  averaged  twenty-two  guineas  a  pict- 
ure ;  it  has  passed  into  the  possession  of  Sir  John  Soane,  at  the  advanced  price 
of  five  hundred  and  seventy  guineas.  The  same  eminent  architect  became  the 
proprietor  of  the  four  pictures  of  an  "Election"  for  the  sum  of  ^1,732.  "Mar- 
riage a  la  Mode  "  was  disposed  of  in  a  similar  way  in  1 750  ;  and  on  the  day  of  the 
sale  one  bidder  appeared,  who  became  master  of  the  six  pictures,  together  with 
their  frames,  for  ^115  los.  Mr.  Angerstein  purchased  them,  in  1797,  for /"i, 381, 
and  they  now  form  a  striking  feature  in  the  National  Gallery. 

The  satire  of  Hogarth  was  not  often  of  a  personal  nature  ;  but  he  knew  his 
own  power,  and  he  sometimes  exercised  it.  Two  of  his  prints,  "The  Times,"  pro- 
duced a  memorable  quarrel  between  himself,  on  one  side,  and  Wilkes  and  Church- 
hill,  on  the  other.  The  satire  of  the  prints  of  "The  Times,"  which  were  published 
in  1762,  was  directed,  not  against  Wilkes  himself,  but  his  political  friends,  Pitt 
and  Temple  ;  nor  is  it  so  biting  as  to  have  required  Wilkes,  in  defence  of  his 
party,  to  retaliate  upon  one  with  whom  he  had  lived  in  familiar  and  friendly  in- 
tercourse. He  did  so,  however,  in  a  number  of  the  North  Briton,  containing 
not  only  abuse  of  the  artist,  but  unjust  and  injurious  mention  of  his  wife.  Ho- 
garth was  deeply  wounded  by  this  attack  ;  he  retorted  by  the  well-known  por- 
trait of  Wilkes  with  the  cap  of  liberty,  and  he  afterward  represented  Churciiill 
as  a  bear.  The  quarrel  was  unworthy  the  talents  either  of  the  painter  or  poet.  It 
is  more  to  be  regretted  because  its  effects,  as  he  himself  intimates,  were  injurious 
to  Hogarth's  declining  healtii.  Tiie  summer  of  i  764  he  spent  at  Chiswick,  and 
the  free  air  and  exercise  worked  a  partial  renovation  of  his  strength.  The  amend- 
ment, however,  was  but  temporary,  and  he  died  suddenly,  October  26th,  the  day 
after  his  return  to  his  London  residence  in  Leicester  Square. 


250 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


SIR  JOSHUA   REYNOLDS 


By  Samuel  Archer 


(I  723-1 792) 


S' 


iR  Joshua  Reynolds,  the  celebrated  painter, 
was,  on  July  16,  1 723,  born  at  Plympton,  a  small 
town  in  Devonshire,  England.  His  father  was  a  min- 
ister of  the  parish,  and  also  master  of  the  grammar 
school  ;  and  being  a  man  of  learning  and  philan- 
thropy, he  was  beloved  and  respected  by  all  to 
whom  he  was  known.  Such  a  man,  it  will  naturally 
be  supposed,  was  assiduous  in  the  cultivation  of  the 
minds  of  his  children,  among  whom  his  son  Joshua 
shone  conspicuous,  by  displaying  at  a  very  early 
j)eriod  a  superiority  of  genius  and  the  rudiments  of 
a  correct  taste.  Unlike  other  boys,  who  generally 
content  themselves  with  giving  a  literal  explanation 
of  their  author,  regardless  of  his  beauties  or  his  faults, 
young  Reynolds  attended  to  both  these,  displaying 
a  happy  knowledge  of  what  he  read,  and  entering  with  ardor  into  the  spirit  of  his 
author.  He  discovered  likewise  talents  for  composition,  and  a  natural  propen- 
sity to  drawing,  in  which  his  friends  and  intimates  thought  him  qualified  to  excel. 
Emulation  was  a  distinguishing  characteristic  of  his  mind,  which  his  father  per- 
ceived with  the  delight  natural  to  a  parent  ;  and  designing  him  for  the  church,  in 
which  he  hoped  that  his  talents  might  raise  him  to  eminence,  he  sent  him  to  one 
of  the  universities. 

Soon  after  this  period  he  grew  passionately  fond  of  painting  ;  and  by  the 
perusal  of  Richardson's  theory  of  that  art  was  determined  to  make  it  his  profes- 
sion through  life.  At  his  own  earnest  request,  therefore,  he  was  removed  to  Lon- 
don ;  and  about  the  year  1742  became  a  pupil  to  Mr.  Hudson,  who,  though  not 
himself  an  eminent  painter,  was  preceptor  to  many  who  afterward  excelled  in  the 
art.  One  of  the  first  advices  which  he  gave  to  Mr.  Reynolds  was  to  copy  care- 
fully Guercino's  drawings.  This  was  done  with  such  skill,  that  many  of  the 
copies  are  said  to  be  now  preserved  in  the  cabinets  of  the  curious  as  the  originals 
of  that  very  great  master. 

About  the  year  1749,  Mr.  Reynolds  went  to  Italy  under  the  auspices,  and  in 
the  company,  of  the  late  Lord  (then  Commodore)  Keppel,  who  was  appointed  to 
the  command  of  the  British  squadron  in  the  Mediterranean.  In  this  garden  of 
the  world,  this  magic  seat  of  arts,  he  failed  not  to  visit  the  schools  of  the  great 
masters,  to  study  the  productions  of  different  ages,  and  to  contemplate  with  un- 
wearied attention  the  various  beauties  which  are  characteristic  of  each.    His  labor 


SIR   JOSHUA   REYNOLDS  251 

here,  as  has  been  observed  of  another  painter,  was  "  the  labor  of  love,  not  the  task 
of  the  hireling  ; "  and  how  much  he  profited  by  it  is  known  to  all  Europe. 

Having  remained  about  two  years  in  Italy,  and  studied  the  language  as  well 
as  the  arts  of  the  country  with  great  success,  he  returned  to  England,  improved 
by  travel  and  refined  by  education.  On  the  road  to  London  from  the  port  where 
he  landed,  he  accidentall}*  found  in  the  inn  where  he  lodged  Johnson's  life  of 
Savage,  and  was  so  taken  with  the  charms  of  composition,  and  the  masterly 
delineation  of  character  displayed  in  that  work,  that,  having  begun  to  read  it 
while  leaning  his  arm  on  the  chimney-piece,  he  continued  in  that  attitude,  in- 
sensible of  pain  till  he  was  hardly  able  to  raise  his  hand  to  his  head.  The  ad- 
miration of  the  work  naturally  led  him  to  seek  the  acquaintance  of  its  author, 
who  continued  one  of  his  sincerest  admirers  and  warmest  friends  till  1 784,  when 
they  were  separated  by  the  stroke  of  death. 

The  first  thing  that  distinguished  him  after  his  return  to  his  native  country 
was  a  full-length  portrait  of  Commodore  Keppel  ;  which  in  polite  circles  was 
spoken  of  in  terms  of  the  highest  encomium,  and  testified  to  what  a  degree  of 
eminence  he  had  arrived  in  his  profession.  This  was  followed  by  a  portrait  of 
Lord  Edgecombe,  and  a  few  others,  which  at  once  introduced  him  to  the  first 
business  in  portrait-painting  ;  and  that  branch  of  the  art  he  cultivated  with  such 
success  as  will  forever  establish  his  fame  with  all  descriptions  of  refined  society. 
Having  painted  some  of  the  first-rate  beauties  of  the  age,  the  polite  world  flocked 
to  see  the  graces  and  the  charms  of  his  pencil  ;  and  he  soon  became  the  most 
fashionable  painter  not  only  in  England,  but  in  all  Europe.  He  has  indeed  pre- 
served the  resemblance  of  so  many  illustrious  characters,  tiiat  we  feel  the  less  re- 
gret at  his  having  left  behind  him  so  few  historical  paintings  ;  though  what  he 
has  done  in  that  way  shows  him  to  have  been  qualified  to  excel  in  both  depart- 
ments. The  only  landscape,  perhaps,  which  he  ever  painted,  except  those  beau- 
tiful and  chaste  ones  which  compose  the  backgrounds  of  many  of  his  portraits,  is 
"A  View  on  the  Thames  from  Richmond,"  which  in  1784  was  exhibited  by  the 
Society  for  Promoting  Painting  and  Design  in  Liverpool. 

In  1764  Mr.  Reynolds  had  the  merit  of  being  the  first  promoter  of  that  club, 
which,  having  long  existed  without  a  name,  became  at  last  distinguished  by  the 
appellation  of  the  Literary  Club.  Upon  the  foundation  of  the  Royal  xAcademy 
of  Painting,  Sculpture,  and  Architecture,  he  was  appointed  president ;  and  his 
acknowledged  excellence  in  his  profession  made  the  appointment  acceptable  to 
all  the  lovers  of  art.  To  add  to  the  dignity  of  this  new  institution,  his  majesty 
conferred  on  the  president  the  honor  of  knighthood  ;  and  Sir  Joshua  delivered 
his  first  discourse  at  the  opening  of  the  Academy,  on  January  2,  1769.  The 
merit  of  that  discourse  has  been  universally  admitted  among  painters ;  but  it  con- 
tains some  directions,  respecting  the  proper  mode  of  prosecuting  their  studies,  to 
which  every  student  of  every  art  would  do  well  to  pay  attention.  "  I  would 
chiefly  recommend  (says  he)  that  an  implicit  obedience  to  the  rules  of  art,  as  es- 
tablished by  the  i)ractice  of  the  great  masters,  should  be  exacted  from  the  young 
students.     That  those  models,  which  have  passed  through  the   approbation  of 


252  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

ages,  shoulci  oe  considered  by  them  as  perfect  and  infallible  guides,  as  subjects 
for  their  imitation,  not  their  criticism.  I  am  confident  that  this  is  the  only  effi- 
cacious method  of  making  a  progress  in  the  arts ;  and  that  he  who  sets  out  with 
doubting,  will  find  life  finished  before  he  becomes  master  of  the  rudiments.  For 
it  may  be  laid  down  as  a  maxim,  that  he  who  begins  by  presuming  on  his  own 
sense,  has  ended  his  studies  as  soon  as  he  has  commenced  them.  Every  oppor- 
tunity, therefore,  should  be  taken  to  discountenance  that  false  and  vulgar  opin- 
ion, that  rules  are  the  fetters  of  genius.  They  are  fetters  only  to  men  of  no  gen- 
ius ;  as  that  armor,  which  upon  the  strong  becomes  an  ornament  and  a  defence, 
upon  the  weak  and  misshapen  turns  into  a  load,  and  cripples  the  body  which  it 
was  made  to  protect." 

Each  succeeding  year,  on  the  distribution  of  the  prizes,  Sir  Joshua  delivered 
to  the  students  a  discourse  of  equal  merit  with  this  ;  and  perhaps  we  do  not  haz- 
ard too  much  when  we  say,  that  from  the  whole  collected,  the  lovers  of  belles- 
lettres  and  the  fine  arts  will  acquire  juster  notions  of  what  is  meant  by  taste  in 
general,  and  better  rules  for  acquiring  a  correct  taste,  than  from  the  multitude 
of  those  volumes  which  have  been  professedly  written  on  the  subject. 

In  the  autumn  of  1785  he  went  to  Brussels,  where  he  expended  about  /'i,ooo 
on  the  purchase  of  paintings  which,  having  been  taken  from  the  diflferent  monas- 
teries and  religious  houses  in  Flanders  and  Germany,  were  then  exposed  to  sale 
by  the  command  of  the  Emperor  Joseph.  Gainsborough  and  he  had  engaged  to 
paint  each  other's  portrait  ;  and  the  canvas  for  both  being  actually  stretched.  Sir 
Joshua  gave  one  sitting  to  his  distinguished  rival  ;  but  to  the  regret  of  ev^ery  ad- 
mirer of  the  art,  the  unexpected  death  of  the  latter  prevented  all  further  progress. 

In  1790  he  was  anxiously  desirous  to  procure  the  vacant  professorship  of  per- 
spective in  the  academy  for  Mr.  Bonorai,  an  Italian  architect  ;  but  that  artist  not 
having  been  yet  elected  an  associate,  was,  of  course,  no  academician,  and  it  be- 
came necessary  to  raise  him  to  those  positions,  in  order  to  qualify  him  for  being 
a  professor.  Mr.  Gilpin  being  his  competitor  for  the  associateship,  the  numbers 
on  the  ballot  proved  equal,  when  the  president,  on  his  casting  vote,  decided  the 
election  in  favor  of  his  friend,  who  was  thereby  advanced  so  far  toward  the  pro- 
fessorship. Soon  after  this,  an  academic  seat  being  vacant.  Sir  Joshua  exerted 
all  his  influence  to  obtain  it  for  Mr.  Bonomi  ;  but  finding  himself  out-voted  by 
a  majority  of  two  to  one,  he  quitted  the  chair  with  great  dissatisfaction,  and  next 
day  sent  to  th'e  secretary  of  the  academy  a  formal  resignation  of  the  office,  which 
for  twenty-one  years  he  had  filled  with  honor  to  himself  and  to  his  country.  His 
indignation,  however,  subsiding,  he  suffered  himself  to  be  prevailed  upon  to  re- 
turn to  the  chair,  which,  within  a  year  and  a  half,  he  was  again  desirous  to  quit 
for  a  better  reason. 

Finding  a  disease  of  languor,  occasioned  by  an  enlargement  of  the  liver, 
to  which  he  had  for  some  time  been  subject,  increase,  and  daily  expecting  a 
total  loss  of  sight,  he  wrote  a  letter  to  the  academy,  intimating  his  intention  to 
resign  the  office  of  president  on  account  of  bodily  infirmities,  which  disabled  him 
from  executing  the  duties  of  it  to  his  own  satisfaction.     The  academy  received 


SIR  JOSHUA   REYNOLDS  253 

this  intelligence  with  the  respectful  concern  due  to  the  talents  and  virtues  of 
their  president,  and  either  then  did  enter,  or  designed  to  enter,  into  a  resolution 
honorable  to  all  parties,  namely,  that  a  deputation  from  the  whole  bodv  of  the 
academy  should  wait  upon  him,  and  inform  him  of  their  wish,  that  the  authority 
and  privileges  of  the  office  of  president  might  be  his  during  his  life,  declaring 
their  willingness  to  permit  the  performance  of  any  of  its  duties  which  might  be 
irksome  to  him  by  a  deputy. 

From  this  period  Sir  Joshua  never  painted  more.  The  last  effort  of  his 
pencil  was  the  portrait  of  the  honorable  Charles  James  Fox,  which  was  executed 
in  his  best  style,  and  shows  that  his  fancy,  his  imagination,  and  his  other  great 
powers  in  the  art  which  he  professed,  remained  unabated  to  the  end  of  his  life. 
When  the  last  touches  were  given  to  this  picture, 

"The  hand  of  Reynolds  fell,  to  rise  no  more." 

On  Thursda}^  February  23,  1792,  the  world  was  deprived  of  this  amiable 
man  and  excellent  artist,  at  the  age  of  sixty-eight  years ;  a  man  than  whom  no 
one,  according  to  Johnson,  had  pas.sed  through  life  with  more  observations  of 
men  and  manners.  The  following  character  of  him  is  said  to  be  the  production 
of  Mr.  Burke  : 

"  His  illness  was  long,  but  borne  with  a  mild  and  cheerful  fortitude,  without 
the  least  mixture  of  anything  irritable  or  querulous,  agreeably  to  the  placid  and 
even  tenor  of  his  whole  life.  He  had,  from  the  beginning  of  his  malady,  a 
distinct  view  of  his  dissolution,  which  he  contemplated  with  that  entire  com- 
posure which  nothing  but  the  innocence,  integrity,  and  usefulness  of  his  life,  and 
an  unaffected  submission  to  the  will  of  Providence,  could  bestow.  In  this  situa- 
tion he  had  every  consolation  from  family  tenderness,  which  his  tenderness  to  his 
family  had  always  merited. 

"  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds  was,  on  very  many  accounts,  one  of  the  most  memo- 
rable men  of  his  time ;  he  was  the  first  Englishman  who  added  the  praise  of  the 
elegant  arts  to  the  other  glories  of  his  country.  In  taste,  in  grace,  in  facility,  in 
happy  invention,  and  in  richness  and  harmony  of  coloring,  he  was  equal  to  the 
great  masters  of  the  renowned  ages.  In  portrait  he  went  beyond  them  ;  for  he 
communicated  to  that  branch  of  the  art  in  which  English  artists  are  the  most 
engaged,  a  variety,  a  fancy,  and  a  dignity  derived  from  the  higher  branches, 
which  even  those  who  professed  them  in  a  superior  manner  did  not  always  pre- 
serve when  they  delineated  individual  nature.  His  portraits  reminded  the  spec- 
tator of  the  invention  of  history  and  the  amenity  of  landscape.  In  painting  por- 
traits he  appears  not  to  be  raised  upon  that  platform,  but  to  descend  to  it  from  a 
higher  sphere.  His  paintings  illustrate  his  lessons,  and  his  lessons  seem  to  be  de- 
rived from  his  paintings. 

"  He  possessed  the  theory  as  perfectly  as  the  practice  of  his  art.  To  be  such 
a  painter,  he  was  a  profound  and  penetrating  philosopher. 

"In  full  happiness  of  foreign  and  domestic  fame,  admired  by  the  expert  in 
art,  and  by  the  learned  in  science,  courted  by  the  great,  caressed  by  sovereign 


25i 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


powers,  and  celebrated  by  distinguished  poets,  his  native  humility,  modesty,  and 
candor  never  forsook  him,  even  on  surprise  or  provocation  ;  nor  was  the  least 
degree  of  arrogance  or  assumption  visible  to  the  most  scrutinizing  eye  in  any 
part  of  his  conduct  or  discourse. 

"  His  talents  of  every  kind — powerful  from  nature,  and  not  meanly  cultivated 
in  letters — his  social  virtues  in  all  the  relations  and  all  the  habitudes  of  life,  ren- 
dered him  the  centre  of  a  very  great  and  unparalleled  variety  of  agreeable  so- 
cieties, which  will  be  dissipated  by  his  death.  He  had  too  much  merit  not  to 
excite  some  jealousy,  too  much  innocence  to  provoke  any  enmity.  The  loss  of 
no  man  of  his  time  can  be  felt  with  more  sincere,  general,  and  unmixed  sorrow." 


BENJAMIN  WEST 

By  Martha  J.  Lamb* 
(l 738-1820) 


I 


•  N  the  wilds  of  the  new  world,  a  century  and 
a  half  ago,  there  was,  apparently,  no  spot 
less  likely  to  produce  a  famous  painter  than  the 
Quaker  province  of  Pennsylvania.  And  yet, 
when  George  Washington  was  only  six  years 
old  there  was  born,  in  the  little  town  of  Spring- 
field, Chester  County,  a  boy  whose  interesting 
and  remarkable  career  from  infancy  to  old  age 
has  provided  one  of  the  most  instructive  les- 
sons for  students  in  art  that  America  affords. 

Perhaps  Benjamin  West's  aptitude  for 
picture-making  in  his  infancy,  while  he  was 
learning  to  walk  and  to  talk,  did  not  exceed 
that  of  hosts  of  other  children,  in  like  circum- 
stances, in  every  generation  since  his  time. 
But  many  curious  things  were  remembered 
and  told  of  this  baby's  performances  after  he 
had  developed  a  decided  talent  for  reproducing  the  beautiful  objects  that  capti- 
vated his  eye.  It  was  in  the  summer  of  1745,  a  few  months  before  he  was  seven 
years  old,  that  his  married  sister  came  home  for  a  visit,  bringing  with  her  an  in- 
fant daughter.  The  next  morning  after  her  arrival,  little  Benjamin  was  left  to 
keep  the  flies  off  the  sleeping  baby,  while  his  mother  and  sister  went  to  the  gar- 
den for  flowers.  The  baby  smiled  in  its  sleep,  and  the  boy  was  captivated.  He 
must  catch  that  smile  and  keep  it.      He  found  some  paper  on  the  table,  scram- 

*  Reprinted  by  permission,  from  the  Magazine  of  American  History. 


BENJAMIN    WEST  255 

bled  for  a  pen,  and  with  red  and  black  ink  made  a  hasty  but  striking  picture  of 
the  little  beauty.  He  heard  his  mother  returning,  and  conscious  of  having  been 
in  mischief,  tried  to  conceal  his  production  ;  but  she  detected  and  captured  it,  and 
regarded  it  long  and  lovingly,  exclaiming  as  her  daughter  entered,  "  He  has  really 
made  a  likeness  of  little  Sally  !  "  She  then  caught  up  the  boy  in  her  arms,  and 
kissed  instead  of  chiding  him,  and  he — looking  up  encouraged — told  her  he  could 
make  the  flowers,  too,  if  she  would  permit.  The  awakening  of  genius  in  Ben- 
jamin West  has  been  distinctly  traced  to  this  incident,  as  the  time  when  he  first 
discovered  that  he  could  imitate  the  forms  of  such  objects  as  pleased  his  sense 
of  sight.  And  the  incident  itself  has  been  aptly  styled  "  the  birth  of  fine  arts  in 
the  New  World." 

The  Quaker  boy,  in  course  of  years,  left  the  wilderness  of  America  to  become 
the  president  of  the  Royal  Academy  in  London.  His  irreproachable  character 
not  less  than  his  excellence  as  an  artist,  gave  him  commanding  position  among 
his  contemporaries.  From  first  to  last  he  was  distinguished  for  his  indefatigable 
industry.  The  number  of  his  pictures  has  been  estimated,  by  a  writer  in  Black- 
wood's Magazine,  at  three  thousand  ;  and  Dunlap  says  that  a  gallery  capable  of 
holding  them  would  be  four  hundred  feet  long,  fifty  feet  wide,  and  forty  feet 
high — or  a  wall  a  quarter  of  a  mile  long. 

The  parents  of  Benjamin  West  were  sincere  and  self-respecting,  and  in  the 
language  of  the  times,  well-to-do.  His  mother's  grandfather  was  the  intimate  and 
confidential  friend  of  William  Penn.  The  family  of  his  father  claimed  direct  de- 
scent from  the  Black  Prince  and  Lord  Delaware,  of  the  time  of  King  Edward 
ni.  Colonel  James  West  was  the  friend  and  companion  in  arms  of  John  Hamp- 
dea  When  Benjamin  W^est  was  at  work  upon  his  great  picture  of  the  "  Institu- 
tion of  the  Garter,"  the  King  of  England  was  delighted  when  the  Duke  of  Buck- 
ingham assured  him  that  West  had  an  ancestral  right  to  a  place  among  the 
warriors  and  knights  of  his  own  painting.  The  Quaker  associates  of  the  parents 
of  the  artist,  the  patriarchs  of  Pennsyh^ania,  regarded  their  asylum  in  America  as 
the  place  for  affectionate  intercourse — free  from  all  the  military  predilections  and 
political  jealousies  of  Europe.  The  result  was  a  state  of  society  more  contented, 
peaceful,  and  pleasing  than  the  world  had  ever  before  exhibited.  At  the  time 
of  the  birth  of  Benjamin  West  the  interior  settlements  in  Pennsylvania  had  at- 
tained considerable  wealth,  and  unlimited  hospitality  formed  a  part  of  the  regular 
economy  of  the  principal  families.  Those  who  resided  near  the  highways  were 
in  the  habit,  after  supper  and  the  religious  exercises  of  the  evening,  of  making  a 
large  fire  in  the  hallway,  and  spreading  a  table  with  refreshments  for  sucii  trav- 
ellers as  might  pass  in  the  night,  who  were  expected  to  step  in  and  help  themselves. 
This  was  conspicuously  the  case  in  Springfield.  Other  acts  of  liberality  were 
performed  by  this  community,  to  an  extent  that  would  have  beggared  the  munifi- 
cence of  the  old  world.  Poverty  was  not  known  in  this  region.  But  whether 
families  traced  their  lineage  to  ancient  and  noble  sources,  or  otherwise,  their 
pride  was  so  tempered  with  the  meekness  of  their  faith,  that  it  lent  a  singular 
dignity  to  their  benevolence. 


256  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

The  Indians  mingled  freely  with  the  people,  and  when  they  paid  their  annual 
visits  to  the  plantations,  raised  their  wigwams  in  the  fields  and  orchards  without 
asking  permission,  and  were  never  molested.  Shortly  after  Benjamin  West's 
first  efforts  with  pen  and  ink,  a  party  of  red  men  reached  and  encamped  in 
Springfield.  The  boy-artist  showed  them  his  sketches  of  birds  and  flowers,  which 
seemed  to  amuse  them  greatly.  They  at  once  proceeded  to  teach  him  how  to 
prepare  the  red  and  yellow  colors  with  which  they  decorated  their  ornaments. 
To  these  Mrs.  West  added  blue,  by  contributing  a  piece  of  indigo.  Thus  the 
boy  had  three  prismatic  colors  for  his  use.  What  could  be  more  picturesque 
than  the  scene  where  the  untutored  Indian  gave  the  future  artist  his  first  lesson 
in  mixing  paints  !  These  wild  men  also  taught  him  archery,  that  he  might  shoot 
birds  for  models  if  he  wanted  their  bright  plumage  to  copy. 

The  neighbors  were  attracted  by  the  boy's  drawings,  and  finally  a  relative, 
Mr.  Pennington,  a  prominent  merchant  of  Philadelphia,  came  to  pay  the  family 
a  visit.  He  thought  the  boy's  crude  pictures  were  wonderful,  as  he  was  then  only 
entering  his  eighth  year.  When  he  went  home  he  immediately  sent  the  little  fel- 
low a  box  of  paints,  with  six  engravings  by  Grevling.  John  Gait,  who  wrote 
from  the  artist's  own  statements,  describes  the  effect  of  this  gift  upon  the  boy. 
In  going  to  bed  he  placed  the  box  so  near  his  couch,  that  he  could  hug  and  ca- 
ress it  every  time  he  wakened.  Next  morning  he  rose  early,  and  taking  his 
paints  and  canvas  to  the  garret,  began  to  work.  He  went  to  breakfast,  and  then 
stole  back  to  his  post  under  the  roof,  forgetting  all  about  school.  When  dinner- 
time came  he  presented  himself  at  table,  as  usual,  but  said  nothing  of  his  occupa- 
tion. He  had  been  absent  from  school  some  days  before  the  master  called  on 
his  parents  to  inquire  what  had  become  of  him.  This  led  to  the  discovery  of  his 
secret  painting,  for  his  mother  proceeded  to  the  garret  and  found  the  truant. 
She  was,  however,  so  astonished  with  the  creation  upon  his  canvas,  that  she  took 
him  in  her  arms  and  kissed  him  with  transports  of  affection.  He  had  made  a 
composition  of  his  own  out  of  two  of  the  engravings — which  he  had  colored  from 
his  ideas  of  the  proper  tints  to  be  used — and  so  perfect  did  the  picture  appear  to 
Mrs.  West  that,  although  half  the  canvas  remained  to  be  covered,  she  would  not 
suffer  the  child .  to  add  another  touch  with  his  brush.  Sixty-seven  years  after- 
ward, Mr.  Gait  saw  this  production  in  the  exact  state  in  which  it  was  left,  and 
Mr.  West  himself  acknowledged  that  in  subsequent  efforts  he  had  never  been 
able  to  excel  some  of  the  touches  of  invention  in  this  first  picture. 

The  first  instruction  in  art  which  the  artist  received  was  from  Mr.  William 
Williams,  a  painter  in  Philadelphia.  Young  West's  first  attempt  at  portraiture 
was  at  Lancaster,  where  he  painted  "The  Death  of  Socrates"  for  William 
Henry,  a  gunsmith.  He  was  not  yet  sixteen,  but  other  paintings  followed  which 
possessed  so  much  genuine  merit,  that  they  have  been  preserved  as  treasures.  One 
of  these  is  in  possession  of  General  Meredith  Reed,  of  Paris,  France,  a  descendant 
of  the  signer.  West  returned  to  his  home  in  Springfield,  in  i  754,  to  discuss  the 
question  of  his  future  vocation.  He  had  an  inclination  for  military  life,  and 
volunteered  as  a  recruit  in  the  old  French  war ;  but  military  attractions  vanished 


BENJAMIN    WEST  257 

among  the  hardships  involved,  and  in  1 756,  when  eighteen  years  old,  he  estab- 
lished himself  in  Philadelphia  as  a  portrait-painter,  his  price  being  "  five  guineas 
a  head."  Two  years  later  he  went  to  New  York,  where  he  passed  eleven 
months,  and  was  liberally  employed  by  the  merchants  and  others.  He  painted 
the  portrait  of  Bishop  Provoost,  those  of  Gerardus  Duyckinck  and  his  wife — full 
length — one  of  Mrs.  Samuel  Breese,  and  many  others,  which  are  in  the  families 
of  descendants,  and  characteristic  examples  of  his  early  work. 

In  I  760  an  opportunity  offered  for  him  to  visit  Rome,  Italy.  He  carried  letters 
to  Cardinal  Albani  and  other  celebrities,  and  as  he  was  very  handsome  and  intelli- 
gent, and  came  from  a  far-away  land  about  which  hung  the  perpetual  charm  of  tra- 
dition and  romance,  he  soon  became  the  lion  of  the  day  among  the  imaginative  Ital- 
ans.  It  was  a  novelty  then  for  an  American  to  appear  in  the  Eternal  City,  and  the 
very  morning  after  his  arrival  a  curious  party  followed  his  steps  to  observe  his  pur- 
suit of  art.  He  remained  in  Italy  until  1763,  and  while  there  he  painted,  among 
others,  his  pictures  of  "  Cimon  and  Iphigenia,"  and  "Angelica  and  Medora." 
His  portrait  of  Lord  Grantham  excited  much  interest,  and  that  nobleman's  intro- 
duction facilitated  his  visit  to  London,  which  proved  so  prolific  in  results. 
There  was  no  great  living  historical  painter  in  England  just  then  ;  and  at  first 
there  was  no  sale  for  West's  pictures,  as  it  was  unfashionable  to  buy  any  but 
"old  masters."  But  the  young  artist  was  undaunted,  and  presently  attracted  at- 
tention in  high  places.  His  picture  of  "  Agrippina  Landing  with  the  Ashes  of 
Germanicus,"  painted  for  Dr.  Drummond,  Archbishop  of  York,  secured  him  the 
favor  of  George  III.,  and  the  commission  from  his  majesty  to  paint  the  "De- 
parture of  Regulus  from  Rome."  His  untiring  industry  and  gentlemanly  habits 
were  conspicuous,  and  may  be  regarded  as  among  the  great  secrets  of  his  con- 
tinual advance  and  public  recognition.  His  "  Parting  of  Hector  and  Androm- 
ache," and  "  Return  of  the  Prodigal  Son,"  were  among  his  notable  productions 
of  this  period.  His  "  Death  of  General  Wolfe  "  has  been,  says  Tuckerman, 
"  truly  declared  to  have  created  an  era  in  English  art,  by  the  successful  example 
it  initiated  of  the  abandonment  of  classic  costume — a  reform  advocated  by 
Reynolds,  who  glories  in  the  popular  innovation."  His  characters  were  clad  in 
the  dress  of  their  time.  Reynolds  said  to  the  Archbishop  of  York  :  "  I  foresee 
that  this  picture  will  not  only  become  one  of  the  most  popular,  but  will  occa- 
sion a  revolution  in  art."  It  was  purchased  by  Lord  Grosvenor.  Among  the 
long  list  of  paintings  executed  by  order  of  the  king  were  "The  Death  of 
Chevalier  Bayard ; "  "Edward  III.  Embracing  his  Son  on  the  Field  of  Battle 
at  Cressy  ;  "  "  The  Installation  of  the  Order  of  the  Garter  ;  "  "  The  Black  Prince 
Receiving  the  King  of  France  and  his  Son  Prisoners  at  Poictiers,"  and  "  Queen 
Philippa  Interceding  with  Edward  for  the  Burgesses  of  Calais."  West  was  one 
of  the  founders,  in  1768,  of  the  Royal  Academy,  and  succeeded  Sir  Joshua 
Reynolds  as  president  of  the  institution  in  1792,  which  post  he  held  almost  unin- 
terruptedly until  181 5. 

In  the  year  1780  he  proposed  a  series  of  pictures  on  the  progress  of  revealed 
religion,  of  which  tiicre  were  thirty-six  subjects  in  all,  but  he  never  executed  but 

17 


25S  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

twenty-eight  of  these,  owing  to  the  mental  trouble  which  befell  the  king.  He 
then  commenced  a  new  series  of  important  works,  of  which  "  Christ  Healing  the 
Sick  "  was  purchased  by  an  institution  in  Great  Britain  for  ^3,000,  and  was  sub- 
sequently copied  for  the  Pennsylvania  Hospital.  "  Penn's  Treaty  with  the  Ind- 
ians "  was  painted  for  Granville  Penn,  the  scene  representing  the  founding  of 
Pennsylvania.  West  wrote  to  one  of  his  family  that  he  had  taken  the  liberty  of 
introducing  in  this  painting  the  likeness  of  his  father  and  his  brother  Thomas. 
"That  is  the  likeness  of  our  brother,"  he  says,  "standing  immediately  behind 
Penn,  leaning  on  his  cane.  I  need  not  point  out  the  picture  of  our  father,  as  I 
believe  you  will  find  it  in  the  print  from  memory."  Tuckerman  says  that  the 
work  which,  in  the  opinion  of  many  critics,  best  illustrates  the  skill  of  West  in 
composition,  drawing,  expression,  and  dramatic  effect,  is  his  "  Death  on  the 
Pale  Horse."  His  "  Cupid,"  owned  in  Philadelphia,  is  one  of  his  most  effective 
pictures  as  to  color. 

The  full-length  portrait  of  W^est,  by  Sir  Thomas  Lawrence,  P.R.A.,  repre- 
sents the  great  artist  in  his  character  as  president  of  the  Royal  Academy,  deliver- 
ing a  lecture  on  "  coloring  "  to  the  students.  Under  his  right  hand  may  be  no- 
ticed, standing  on  an  easel,  a  copy  of  Raphael's  cartoon  of  the  "  Death  of 
Ananias."  The  picture  of  W^est's  face  has  been  considered  a  perfect  likeness, 
but  the  figure  somewhat  too  large  and  too  tall  in  its  effects.  A  copy  of  this  por- 
trait was  made  by  Charles  R.  Leslie  ;  and  Washington  Allston  also  painted  a  por- 
trait of  the  artist.  There  exists,  it  is  said,  a  portrait  of  West  from  his  own  hand, 
taken  apparently  at  about  the  age  of  forty,  three-quarter  length,  in  Quaker  cos- 
tume. 


THORWALDSEN 

By  Hans  Christian   Andersen 

( I  770-1844) 

}T  was  in  Copenhagen,  on  November  19,  i  770,  that  a  carver  of  figures 
for  ships'  heads,  by  name  Gottskalk  Thorwaldsen,  was  presented 
by  his  wife,  Karen  Gronlund,  the  daughter  of  a  clergyman  in  Jut- 
land, with  a  son,  who  at  his  baptism  received  the  name  of  Bertel,  or 
Albert. 

The  father  had  come  from  Iceland,  and  lived  in  poor  circumstances.  They 
dwelt  in  Lille  Gronncgadc  (Little  Green  Street),  not  far  from  the  Academy  of 
Arts.  The  moon  has  often  peeped  into  their  poor  room  ;  she  has  told  us  about 
it  in  "  A  Picture-book  without  Pictures  "  : 

"The  father  and  mother  slept,  but  their  little  son  did  not  sleep;  where  the 
flowered  cotton  bed-curtains  moved  I  saw  the  child  peep  out.  I  thought  at  first 
that  he  looked  at  the  Bornholm  clock,  for  it  was  finely  painted  with  red  and 
green,  and  there  was  a  cuckoo  on  the  top  ;  it  had  heavy  leaden  weights,  and  the 


srR  Thomas  lawhence  pi 


BENJAMIN   WEST,    PRESIDENT    OF    THE    ROYAL    ACADEMY. 


THORWALDSEN 


259 


pendulum  with  its  shining  brass  plate  went  to  and  fro  with  a  '  tick  !  tick  ! '     But 

it  was  not  that  he  looked  at ;   no,  it  was  his  mother's  spinning-wheel,  which  stood 

directly  under  the  clock  ;  this  was  the  dearest  piece 

of  furniture  in  the  whole  house  for  the  boy ;  but  he 

dared  not  touch  it,  for  if  he  did,  he  got  a  rap  over 

the  fingers.     While  his  mother  spun,  he  would  sit 

for  hours  together  looking  at  the  buzzing  spindle 

and  the  revolving  wheel,  and  then  he  had  his  own 

thoughts.     Oh  !  if  he  only  durst  spin  that  wheel ! 

His  father  and  mother  slept ;  he  looked  at  them,  he 

looked  at  the  wheel,  and  then  by  degrees  a  Httle 

naked  foot  was  stuck  out  of  bed,  and  then  another 

naked  foot,  then  there  came  two  small  legs,  and, 

with  a  jump,  he  stood  on  the  floor.     He  turned  round 

once  more,  to  see  if  his  parents  slept  ;   yes,  they 

'.iid,  and  so  he  went  softly,  quite  softly,  only  in  his 

Kttle  shirt,  up  to  the  wheel,  and  began  to  spin.    The 

cord  flew  off,  and  the  wheel  then  ran  much  quicker. 

His  mother  awoke  at  the  same  moment ;  the  curtains  moved  ;  she  looked  out 

and  thought  of  the  brownie,  or  another  little  spectral  being.     '  Have  mercy  on 

us ! '  said  she,  and  in  her  fear  she  struck  her  husband  in  the  side  ;  he  opened  his 

eyes,  rubbed  them  with  his  hands,  and  looked  at  the  busy  little  fellow.     '  It  is 

Bertel,  woman,'  said  he." 

What  the  moon  relates  we  see  here  as  the  first  picture  in  Thorwaldsen's  life's 
gallery  ;  for  it  is  a  reflection  of  the  reality.  Thorwaldsen  has  himself,  when  in  fa- 
miliar conversation  at  Nysoe,  told  the  author  almost  word  for  word  what  he,  in 
his  "  Picture-book,"  lets  the  moon  say.  It  was  one  of  his  earliest  remembrances, 
how  he,  in  his  little  short  shirt,  sat  in  the  moonlight  and  spun  his  mother's  wheel, 
while  she,  dear  soul,  took  him  for  a  little  spectre. 

A  few  years  ago  there  still  lived  an  old  ship-carpenter,*  who  remembered  the 
little,  light-haired,  blue-eyed  boy,  that  came  to  his  father  in  the  carving-house  at 
the  dock-yard  ;  he  was  to  learn  his  father's  trade  ;  and  as  the  latter  felt  how 
bad  it  was  not  to  be  able  to  draw,  the  boy,  then  eleven  years  of  age,  was  sent  to 
the  drawing-school  at  the  Academy  of  Arts,  where  he  made  rapid  progress.  Two 
years  afterward,  Bertel,  or  Albert,  as  we  shall  in  future  call  him,  was  of  great 
assistance  to  his  father  ;  nay,  he  even  improved  his  work. 

Sec  the  hovering  ships  on  the  wharves  !  The  Dannebrog  waves,  the  workmen 
sit  in  circle  under  the  shade  at  their  frugal  breakfasts;  but  foremost  stands  the 
principal  figure  in  this  picture  :  it  is  a  boy  who  cuts  with  a  bold  hand  the  life- 
like features  in  the  wooden  image  for  the  beak-head  of  the  vessel.  It  is  the 
ship's  guardian  spirit,  and,  as  the  first  image  from  the  hand  of  Albert  Thorwald- 
sen, it  shall  wander  out  into  the  wide  world.  The  eternally  swelling  sea  should 
baptize  it  with  its  waters,  and  hang  its  wreaths  of  wet  plants  around  it. 

Our  next  picture  advances  a  step  forward.     Unobserved  among  the  other 


260  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

boys,  he  has  now  frequented  the  Academy's  school  for  six  years  already,  where, 
always  taciturn  and  silent,  he  stood  by  his  drawing-board.  His  answer  was 
"yes"  or  "no,"  a  nod  or  a  shake  of  the  head;  but  mildness  shone  from  his 
features,  and  good-nature  was  in  every  expression.  The  picture  shows  us  Albert 
as  a  candidate  for  confirmation.  He  is  now  seventeen  years  of  age — not  a  very 
young  age  to  ratify  his  baptismal  compact ;  his  place  at  the  dean's  house  is  the 
last  among  the  poor  boys,  for  his  knowledge  is  not  sufficient  to  place  him  higher. 
There  had  just  at  that  time  been  an  account  in  the  newspapers,  that  the  jnipil 
Thorwaldsen  had  gained  the  Academy's  smaller  medal  for  a  bas-relief  representing 
a  "Cupid  Reposing."  "Is  it  your  brother  that  has  gained  the  medal?"  inquired 
the  dean.  "  It  is  myself,"  said  Albert,  and  the  clei"gyman  looked  kindly  on  him, 
placed  him  first  among  all  the  boys,  and  from  that  time  alwa)'s  called  him 
Monsieur  Thorwaldsen.  Oh!  how  deeply  did  that  "Monsieur"  then  sound  in 
his  mind  !  as  he  has  often  said  since,  it  sounded  far  more  powerfully  than  any 
title  that  kings  could  give  him  :  he  never  afterward  forgot  it. 

In  a  small  house  in  Aabeuraa — the  street  where  Holberg  lets  his  poor  poets 
dwell — lived  Albert  Thorwaldsen  with  his  parents,  and  divided  his  time  between 
the  study  of  art  and  assisting  his  father.  The  Academy's  lesser  gold  was  then  the 
prize  to  be  obtained  for  sculpture.  Our  artist  was  now  twenty  years  of  age  ;  his 
friends  knew  his  abilities  better  than  himself,  and  they  compelled  him  to  enter  on 
the  task.     The  subject  proposed  was,  "  Heliodorus  Driven  out  of  the  Temple." 

We  are  now  in  Charlottenburs:  ;  but  the  little  chamber  in  which  Thorwaldsen 
lately  sat  to  make  his  sketch  is  empty,  and  he,  chased  by  the  demons  of  fear  and 
distrust,  hastens  down  the  narrow  back-stairs  with  the  intention  not  to  return. 
Nothing  is  accidental  in  the  life  of  a  great  genius  ;  an  apparent  insignificance  is 
a  God's  guiding  finger.  Thorwaldsen  was  to  complete  his  task.  Who  is  it  that 
stops  him  on  the  dark  stairs  ?  One  of  the  professors  just  comes  that  way,  speaks 
to  him,  questions,  admonishes  him.  He  returns,  and  in  four  hours  the  sketch  is 
finished,  and  the  gold  medal  won.     This  was  on  August  15,  179 1. 

Count  Ditlew  de  Reventlow,  minister  of  state,  saw  the  young  artist's  work, 
and  became  his  protector  ;  he  placed  his  own  name  at  the  head  of  a  subscription 
that  enabled  Thorwaldsen  to  devote  his  time  to  the  study  of  his  art.  Two  years 
afterward  the  large  gold  medal  was  to  be  contended  for  at  the  Academy,  the  suc- 
cessful candidate  thereby  gaining  the  right  to  a  travelling  stipcndiiivi.  Thor- 
waldsen was  again  the  first ;  but  before  he  entered  on  his  travels,  it  was  deemed 
necessary  to  extend  that  knowledge  which  an  indifferent  education  at  school  had 
left  him  in  want  of.  He  read,  studied,  and  the  Academy  gave  him  its  support ;  ac- 
knowledgment smiled  on  him,  a  greater  and  more  spiritual  sphere  lay  open  to  him. 

A  portrait  figure  stands  now  before  us ;  it  is  that  of  a  Dane,  the  learned  and 
severe  Zoega,  to  whom  the  young  artist  is  specially  recommended,  but  who  only 
sees  in  him  a  common  talent  ;  whose  words  are  only  those  of  censure,  and  whose 
eye  sees  only  a  servile  imitation  of  the  antique  in  his  works.  Strictly  honest  in 
his  judgment,  according  to  his  own  ideas,  is  this  man,  who  should  be  Thorwald- 
sen's  guide. 


THORWALDSEN  261 

We  let  three  years  glide  away  after  the  arrival  of  Thorwaldsen,  and  ask  Zoega 
what  he  now  says  of  Albert,  or,  as  the  Italians  call  him,  Alberto,  and  the  severe 
man  shakes  his  head  and  says:  "There  is  much  to  blame,  little  to  be  satisfied 
with,  and  diligent  he  is  not !  "  Yet  he  was  diligent  in  a  high  degree  ;  but  genius 
is  foreign  to  a  foreign  mind.  "  The  snow  had  just  then  thawed  from  my  eyes," 
he  has  himself  often  repeated.  The  drawings  of  the  Danish  painter  Carstens 
formed  one  of  those  spiritual  books  that  shed  its  holy  baptism  over  that  growing 
genius.  The  little  atelier  looked  like  a  battle-field,  for  roundabout  were  broken 
statues.  Genius  formed  them  often  in  the  midnight  hours ;  despondency  over 
their  faults  broke  them  in  the  day. 

The  three  years,  for  which  he  had  received  a  stipendium,  were  as  if  they  had 
flown  away,  and  as  yet  he  had  produced  nothing.  The  time  for  his  return  drew 
nigh.  One  work,  however,  he  must  complete,  that  it  might  not  with  justice  be 
said  in  Denmark,  "  Thorwaldsen  has  quite  wasted  his  time  in  Rome."  Doubting 
his  genius  just  when  it  embraced  him  most  affectionately  ;  not  expecting  a  vic- 
tory, while  he  already  stood  on  its  open  road,  he  modelled  "Jason  who  has  Gained 
the  Golden  Fleece."  It  was  this  that  Thorwaldsen  would  have  gained  in  the  king- 
dom of  arts,  and  which  he  now  thought  he  must  resign.  The  figure  stood  there 
in  clay,  many  eyes  looked  carelessly  on  it,  and — he  broke  it  to  pieces  ! 

It  was  in  April,  1801,  that  his  return  home  was  fixed,  in  company  with  Zoega. 
It  was  put  off  until  the  autumn.  During  this  time  "Jason"  occupied  all  his 
thoughts.  A  new,  a  larger  figure  of  the  hero  was  formed,  an  immortal  work  ;  but 
it  had  not  then  been  announced  to  the  world,  nor  understood  by  it.  "Here  is 
something  more  than  common  !"  was  said  by  many.  Even  the  man  to  whom  all 
paid  homage,  the  illustrious  Canova,  started,  and  exclaimed  :  "  Quest'  opera  di 
quel  giovane  Danese  e  fatta  in  uno  stilo  nuovo,  e  grandioso  ■!  "  Zoega  smiled.  "  It 
is  bravely  done  ! "  said  he.  The  Danish  songstress,  Frederikke  Brunn,  was  then 
in  Rome  and  sang  enthusiastically  about  Thorwaldsen's  "Jason."  She  assisted 
the  artist,  so  that  he  was  enabled  to  get  this  figure  cast  in  plaster  ;  for  he  himself 
had  no  more  money  than  was  just  sufficient  for  his  expenses  home. 

The  last  glass  of  wine  had  been  already  drunk  as  a  farewell,  the  boxes  packed, 
and  the  vettiirino's  carriage  was  before  the  door  at  daybreak  ;  the  boxes  were 
fastened  behind.  Then  came  a  fellow-traveller— the  sculptor,  Hagemann,  who 
was  returning  to  his  native  city,  Berlin.  His  passport  was  not  ready.  Then"  de- 
parture must  be  put  off  until  the  next  day  ;  and  Thorwaldsen  promised,  although 
the  vetturino  complained  and  abused  him,  to  remain  so  long.  He  stayed — stayed 
to  win  an  immortal  name  on  earth,  and  cast  a  lustre  over  Denmark. 

Though  forty  years  resident  in  Rome,  rich  and  independent,  he  lived  and 
worked  with  the  thought  of  once  returning  home  to  Denmark,  there  to  rest  him- 
self ;  unaccustomed  to  the  great  comforts  of  other  rich  artists  in  Rome,  he  lived 
a  bachelor's  life.  Was  his  heart,  then,  no  longer  open  to  love  since  his  first  de- 
parture from  Copenhagen  ?  A  thousand  beautiful  Cupids  in  marble  will  tell  us 
how  warmly  that  heart  beat.     Love  belongs  to  life's  mysteries. 

We  know  that  Thorwaldsen  left  a  daughter   in  Rome,  whose   birth  he  ac- 


262  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

knowledged  ;  we  also  know  tliat  more  than  one  female  of  quality  would  will- 
ino;ly  have  given  her  hand  to  the  great  artist.  The  year  before  his  first  return  to 
Denmark  he  lay  ill  at  Naples,  and  was  nursed  by  an  English  lady  who  felt  the 
most  ardent  affection  for  him  ;  and,  from  that  feeling  of  gratitude  which  was 
awakened  in  him,  he  immediately  consented  to  their  union.  When  he  had  re- 
covered and  afterward  reti^rned  to  Rome,  this  promise  preyed  on  his  mind,  he 
felt  that  he  was  not  now  formed  to  be  a  husband,  acknowledged  that  gratitude 
was  not  love,  and  that  they  were  not  suited  for  each  other  ;  after  a  long  combat 
with  himself,  he  wrote  and'info.rmed  her  of  his  determination.  Thorvvaldsen  was 
never  married. 

The  following  trait  is  as  characteristic  of  his  heart  as  of  his  whole  personality. 
One  day,  while  in  Rome,  there  came  a  poor  countryman  to  him,  an  artisan,  who 
had  long  been  ill.  He  came  to  say  farewell,  and  to  thank  him  for  the  money 
that  he  and  others  of  his  countrymen  had  subscribed  together,  with  which  he  was 
to  reach  home. 

"  But  you  will  not  walk  the  whole  way  ?"  said  Thorwaldsen. 

"  I  am  obliged  to  do  so,"  replied  the  man. 

"  But  you  are  still  too  weak  to  walk — you  cannot  bear  the  fatigue,  nor  must 
you  do  it  !  "  said  he. 

The  man  assured  him  of  the  necessity  of  doing  so. 

Thorwaldsen  went  and  opened  a  drawer,  took  out  a  handful  of  scudi  and  gave 
them  to  him,  saying,  "  See,  now  you  will  ride  the  whole  way  ! " 

The  man  thanked  him,  but  assured  him  that  his  gift  would  not  be  more  than 
sufficient  to  carry  him  to  Florence. 

"  Well  !  "  said  Thorwaldsen,  clapping  him  on  the  shoulder,  as  he  went  a  sec- 
ond time  to  the  drawer  and  took  out  another  handful.  The  man  was  grateful  in 
the  highest  degree,  and  was  going.  "  Now  you  can  ride  the  whole  way  home 
and  be  comfortable  on  the  way,"  said  he,  as  he  followed  the  man  to  the  door. 

"I  am  very  glad,"  said  the  man.  "God  bless  you  for  it!  but  to  ride  the 
whole  way  requires  a  little  capital." 

"  Well,  then,  tell  me  how  great  that  must  be,"  he  asked,  and  looked  earnestly 
at  him.  The  man  in  a  modest  mannernamed  the  requisite  sum,  and  Thorwaldsen 
went  a  third  time  to  the  drawer,  counted  out  the  sum,  accompanied  him  to  the 
door,  pressed  his  hand,  and  repeated,  "  But  now  you  will  ride,  for  you  have  not 
strength  to  walk  !  " 

Our  artist  did  not  belong  to  the  class  of  great  talkers  ;  it  was  only  in  a  small 
circle  that  he  could  be  brought  to  say  anything,  but  then  it  was  always  with  hu- 
mor and  gayety.  A  few  energetic  exclamations  of  his  are  preserved.  A  well- 
known  sculptor,  expressing  himself  one  day  with  much  self-feeling,  entered  into 
a  dispute  with  Thorwaldsen,  and  set  his  own  works  over  the  latter' s.  "  You  may 
bind  my  hands  behind  me,"  said  Thorwaldsen,  "  and  I  will  bite  the  marble  out 
with  my  teeth  better  than  you  can  carve  it." 

Thorwaldsen  possessed  specimens  in  plaster  of  all  his  works  ;  these,  together 
with  the  rich  marble  statues  and  bas-reliefs  which  he  had  collected  of  his  own 


THORWALDSEN  263 

accord,  without  orders,  and  tTie  number  of  jiaintin2;s  that  he  every  year  bought  of 
young  artists,  formed  a  treasure  that  he  wished  to  ha\'e  in  his  proper  home,  Co- 
penhagen. Therefore,  when  the  Danish  government  sent  vessels  of  war  to  the 
Mediterranean,  in  order  to  fetch  the  works  that  were  ready  for  the  palace  or  the 
churches,  he  alwavs  sent  a  number  of  his  own  things  with  them.  Denmark  was 
to  inherit  these  treasures  of  art  ;  and,  in  order  to  see  them  collected  in  a  place 
worthy  of  them,  a  zeal  was  awakened  in  the  nation  to  build  a  museum  for  their 
reception.  A  committee  of  his  Danish  admirers  and  friends  sent  out  a  requisi- 
tion to  the  people,  that  everyone  might  give  their  mite  ;  many  a  poor  servant- 
girl  and  many  a  peasant  gave  theirs,  so  that  a  good  sum  was  soon  collected. 
Frederick  VI.  gave  ground  for  the  building,  and  the  erection  thereof  was  com- 
mitted to  the  architect,  Bindesbol. 

Thorwaldsen,  in  1838,  had  attained  universal  fame.  The  frigate  Rota  was 
despatched  to  bring  a  cargo  of  his  works  to  Copenhagen,  and  he  was  to  arrive 
at  the  same  time,  perhaps  to  remain  in  Denmark.  Close  to  Presto  Bay,  sur- 
rounded by  wood-grown  banks,  lies  Nysoe,  the  principal  seat  of  the  baron}^  of 
Stampenborg,  a  place  which,  through  Thorwaldsen,  has  become  remarkable  in 
Denmark.  The  open  strand,  the  beautiful  beech  woods,  even  the  little  town 
seen  through  the  orchards,  at  some  few  hundred  paces  from  the  mansion,  make 
the  place  worthy  of  a  visit  on  account  of  its  truly  Danish  scenery.  Here 
Thorwaldsen  found  his  best  home  in  Denmark  ;  here  he  seemed  to  increase  his 
•fame,  and  here  a  series  of  his  last  beautiful  bas-reliefs  were  produced. 

Baron  Stampe  was  one  of  nature's  noblest-minded  men  ;  his  hospitality  and 
his  lady's  daughterly  affection  for  Thorwaldsen  opened  a  home  for  him  here,  a 
comfortable  and  good  one.  A  great  energetic  power  in  the  baroness  incited  his 
activity ;  she  attended  him  with  a  daughter's  care,  elicited  from  him  every  little 
wish,  and  executed  it.  Directly  after  his  first  visit  to  Nysoe,  a  short  tour  to 
Moen's  chalk  cliffs  was  arranged,  and  during  the  few  days  that  were  passed  there, 
a  little  atelier  was  erected  in  the  garden  at  Nysoe,  close  to  the  canal  which  half 
encircles  the  principal  building  :  here,  and  in  a  corner  room  of  the  mansion,  on 
the  first  floor  facing  the  sea,  most  of  Thorwaldsen's  works,  during  the  last  years 
of  his  life,  were  executed:  "Christ  Bearing  the  Cross,"  "The  Entry  into  Jeru- 
salem," "  Rebecca  at  the  Well,"  his  own  portrait-statue,  Oehlenschlrcgcr's  and 
Holberg's  busts,  etc.  Baroness  Stampe  was  in  faithful  attendance  on  him,  lent 
him  a  helping  hand,  and  read  aloud  for  him  from  Ilolberg.  Driving  abroad, 
weekly  concerts,  and  in  the  evenings  his  fondest  play,  "The  Lottery,"  were  what 
most  easily  excited  him,  and  on  these  occasions  he  would  say  many  amusing 
things.  He  has  represented  the  Stampe  family  in  two  bas-reliefs  :  in  the  one, 
representing  the  mother,  the  two  daughters,  and  the  youngest  son,  is  the  artist 
himself ;  the  other  exhibits  the  father  and  the  two  eldest  sons. 

All  circles  sought  to  attract  Thorwaldsen  ;  he  was  at  e.very  great  festival,  in 
every  great  society,  and  every  evening  in  the  theatre  by  the  side  of  Oehlen- 
schla;ger.  His  greatness  was  allied  to  a  mildness,  a  straightforwardness,  that  in 
the   highest   degree    fascinated  the  stranger    who  approached    him  for  the  fust 


264  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

time.  His  alch'cr  in  Copenhagen  was  visited  daily  ;  he  therefore  felt  himself 
more  comfortable  and  undisturbed  at  Nysoe.  Baron  Stampe  and  his  family  ac- 
companied him  to  Italy  in  1841,  when  he  again  visited  that  country.  The  whole 
journey,  which  was  by  way  of  Berlin,  Dresden,  Frankfort,  the  Rhine  towns,  and 
Munich,  was  a  continued  triumphal  procession.  The  winter  was  passed  in  Rome, 
and  the  Danes  there  had  a  home  in  which  they  found  a  welcome. 

The  following  year  Thorwaldsen  was  again  in  Denmark,  and  at  his  favorite 
place,  Nysoe.  On  Christmas  eve  he  here  formed  his  beautiful  bas-relief,  "  Christ- 
mas Joys  in  Heaven,"  which  Oehlenschleeger  consecrated  with  a  poem.  The  last 
birthday  of  his  life  was  celebrated  here  ;  the  performance  of  one  of  Holberg's 
vaudevilles  was  arranged,  and  strangers  invited  ;  yet  the  morning  of  that  dav  was 
the  homeliest,  when  only  the  family  and  the  author  of  this  memoir,  who  had 
written  a  merry  song  for  the  occasion,  which  was  still  wet  on  the  paper,  placed 
themselves  outside  the  artist's  door,  each  with  a  pair  of  tongs,  a  gong,  or  a  bottle 
on  which  thev  rubbed  a  cork,  as  an  accompaniment,  and  sung  the  song  as  a  morn- 
ing greeting.  Thorwaldsen,  in  his  morning  gown,  opened  the  door,  laughing  ; 
he  twirled  his  black  Raphael's  cap,  took  a  pair  of  tongs  himself,  and  accompanied 
us,  while  he  danced  round  and  joined  the  others  in  the  loud  "  hurra  !  " 

A  charming  bas-relief,  "  The  Genius  of  Poetry,"  was  just  completed  ;  it  was 
the  same  that  Thorwaldsen,  on  the  last  day  of  his  life,  bequeathed  to  Oehlen- 
schlseger,  and  said,  "  It  may  serve  as  a  medal  for  you." 

On  Sunday,  March  24,  1844,  a  small  party  of  friends  were  assembled  at  the 
residence  of  Baron  Stampe,  in  Copenhagen.  Thorwaldsen  was  there  and  was 
unusually  lively,  told  stories,  and  spoke  of  a  journey  that  he  intended  to  make  to 
Italy  in  the  course  of  the  summer.  Cahn's  tragedy  of  "  Griseldis  "  was  to  be 
performed  for  the  first  time  that  evening  at  the  theatre.  Tragedy  was  not  his 
favorite  subject,  but  comedy,  and  particularly  the  comedies  of  Holberg  ;  but  it 
was  something  new  that  he  was  to  see,  and  it  had  become  a  sort  of  habit  with 
him  to  pass  the  evening  in  the  theatre.  About  six  o'clock,  therefore,  he  went  to 
the  theatre  alone.  The  overture  had  begun  ;  on  entering  he  shook  hands  with 
a  few  of  his  friends,  took  his  usual  seat,  stood  up  again  to  allow  one  to  pass  him, 
Sc>t  down  again,  bent  his  head,  and  was  no  more  !  The  music  continued.  Those 
nearest  to  him  thought  he  was  only  in  a  swoon,  and  he  was  borne  out ;  but  he 
was  numbered  with  the  dead. 

The  mournful  intelligence  of  his  death  soon  spread  through  the  country  and 
through  all  lands  ;  funeral  dirges  were  sung  and  funeral  festivals  were  arranged  in 
Berlin  and  Rome  ;  in  the  Danish  theatre,  whence  his  soul  took  its  flight  to  God, 
there  was  a  festival ;  the  place  where  he  sat  was  decorated  with  crape  and  laurel 
wreaths,  and  a  poem  by  Heiberg  was  recited,  in  which  his  greatness  and  his  death 
were  alluded  to. 

The  day  before  Thorwaldsen's  death  the  interior  of  his  tomb  was  finished,  for 
it  was  his  wish  that  his  remains  might  rest  in  the  centre  of  the  court-yard  of  the 
museum  ;  it  was  then  walled  round,  and  he  begged  that  theie  might  be  a  marble 
edge  around  it,  and  a  few  rose-trees  and  flowers  planted  on  it  as  his  monument. 


JEAN-FRANgOIS    MILLET 


265 


The  whole  building,  with  the  rich  treasures  which  he  presented  to  his  fatherland, 
will  be  his  monument  ;  his  works  are  to  be  placed  in  the  rooms  of  the  square 
building  that  surrounds  the  open  court-yard,  and  which,  both  internally  and  ex- 
ternally, are  painted  in  the  Pompeian  style.  His  arrival  in  the  roads  of  Copen- 
hagen and  landing  at  the  custom-house  form  the  subjects  depicted  in  the  com- 
partments under  the  windows  of  one  side  of  the  museum.  Through  centuries  to 
come  will  nations  wander  to  Denmark  ;  not  allured  by  our  charming  green  isl- 
ands, with  their  fresh  beech-woods  alone — no,  but  to  see  these  works  and  this 
tomb. 

There  is,  however,  one  place  more  that  the  stranger  will  visit,  the  little  spot 
at  Nysoe  where  his  atelier  stands,  and  where  the  tree  bends  its  branches  over  the 
canal  to  the  solitary  swan  which  he  fed.  The  name  of  Thorwaldsen  will  be  re- 
membered in  England  by  his  statues  of  Jason  and  Byron  ;  in  Switzerland,  by  his 
"  recumbent  lion  ; "  in  Roeskilde,  by  his  figure  of  Christian  the  Fourth.  It  will 
live  in  every  breast  in  which  a  love  of  art  is  enkindled. 


JEAN-FRANgOIS   MILLET* 

By  Clarence  Cook 
(1814-1875) 


\  T  TE  read  that  on  one  occasion,  when  a 


picture  by  some  Dutch  artist,  repre- 
senting peasants  at  their  sports,  was  shown 
to  Louis  XIV.,  he  angrily  exclaimed, 
"  Take  away  those  vermin  !  "  Such  sub- 
jects had  never  been  chosen  by  French 
artists,  nor  indeed  had  they  been  seen  any- 
where in  Europe  before  the  Dutch  artists 
began  to  paint  them  in  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. The  Italian  painters  of  the  early  and 
the  later  Renaissance,  working  almost  ex- 
clusively for  the  churches,  or  for  the  pal- 
aces of  pleasure-loving  princes,  did  not 
consider  the  peasant  or  the  laboring  man, 
by  himself,  a  proper  subject  for  his  art.  If  he  were  introduced  at  any  time  into 
picture  or  bas-relief,  it  was  only  as  a  necessary  actor  in  some  religious  story,  such 
as  "The  Adoration  of  the  Shepherds,"  or  in  the  representations  of  the  months  or 
the  seasons,  as  in  the  Fountain  of  the  Public  Square  at  Perugia,  where  we  see 
the  peasant  engaged  in  the  labors  of  the  farm  or  vineyard  :  cutting  the  wheat, 
gathering  in  the  grapes,  and  treading  out  the  wine,  and,  in  the  later  season,  dress- 

•  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


266  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

ing  the  hog  he  has  been  killing ;  for  in  those  less  sophisticated  times,  Art,  no 
more  than  Poetry,  despised  the  ruder  side  of  rustic  life. 

The  German  artists  of  the  sixteenth  century  introduced  peasants  and  peasant- 
life  into  their  designs  whenever  the  subject  admitted.  Albert  Durer  was  especial- 
ly given  to  this,  and  it  often  gives  a  particular  savor,  sometimes  a  half-humorous 
expression,  to  his  treatment  of  even  religious  subjects  ;  as  where,  in  his  design, 
"  The  Repose  in  Egypt,"  he  shows  Joseph,  the  foster-father  of  Jesus,  making  a 
water-trough  out  of  a  huge  log,  and  a  bevy  of  cherub-urchins  about  him  gather- 
ing up  the  chips.  Mary,  meanwhile,  as  the  peasant  mother,  sits  by,  spinning 
and  rocking  the  cradle  of  the  Holy  Child  with  her  foot. 

But  these  examples  only  serve  to  make  clearer  the  fact  that  in  the  earlier  times 
there  was  no  place  found  in  art  for  the  representation  of  the  laboring  man, 
whether  in  the  field  or  in  the  shop,  except  as  an  illustration  of  some  allegorical 
or  religious  theme.  Nor  in  the  Dutch  pictures  that  Louis  XIV.  despised,  and 
that  our  own  time  finds  so  valuable  for  their  artistic  qualities,  was  there  anything 
outside  of  their  beauty  or  richness  of  tone  or  color  to  redeem  their  coarseness 
and  vulgarity.  There  was  no  poetry  in  the  treatment,  nor  any  sympathy  with 
anything  higher  than  the  grossest  guzzling,  fighting,  and  horseplay.  The  great 
monarch,  who,  according  to  his  lights,  was  a  man  of  delicacy  and  refinement, 
was  certainly  right  in  contemning  such  subjects,  and  it  is  perhaps  to  his  credit  that 
he  did  not  care  enough  for  "  Art  for  Art's  sake  "  to  excuse  the  brutality  of  the 
theme  for  the  sake  of  the  beauty  of  the  painting. 

The  next  appearance  of  the  peasant  in  art  was  of  a  very  different  sort,  and 
represented  a  very  different  state  of  social  feeling  from  the  "peasants"  of  the 
Dutch  painters.  In  the  Salon  of  1850  there  appeared  a  picture  called  "The 
Sower  "  and  representing  a  young  peasant  sowing  grain.  There  was  nothing  in 
the  subject  to  connect  it  particularly  with  any  religious  symbolism — not  even 
with  the  Parable  of  the  Sower  who  went  forth  to  sow  ;  nor  with  any  series  of 
personifications  of  the  months.  This  was  a  simple  peasant  of  the  Norman  coast, 
in  his  red  blouse  and  blue  trousers,  his  legs  wrapped  in  straw,  and  his  weather- 
beaten  hat,  full  of  holes.  He  marches  with  the  rhythmic  step  made  necessary 
by  his  task,  over  the  downs  that  top  the  high  cliffs,  followed  by  a  cloud  of  crows 
that  pounce  upon  the  grain  as  he  sows  it.  At  first  sight  there  would  seem  to  be 
nothing  in  this  picture  to  call  for  particular  notice  ;  but  the  public,  the  artists, 
the  critics,  were  with  one  accord  strongly  drawn  to  it.  Something  in  the  picture 
appealed  to  feelings  deeper  than  mere  curiosity,  and  an  interest  was  excited  such 
as  did  not  naturally  belong  to  a  picture  of  a  man  sowing  a  field  of  grain.  The 
secret  was  this :  that  a  man  born  and  bred  in  the  midst  of  laboring  people,  strug- 
gling with  the  hard  necessities  of  life — himself  a  laborer,  and  one  who  knew  by 
experience  all  the  lights  and  shades  of  the  laborer's  life — had  painted  this  picture 
out  of  his  own  deep  sympathy  with  his  fellows,  and  to  please  himself  by  repro- 
ducing the  most  significant  and  poetical  act  in  the  life  of  the  farmer. 

The  painter  of  this  picture,  the  first  man  of  our  time  to  give  the  laborer  in 
the  fields  and  on  the  farm  a  place  in  art,  and  to  set  people  to  thinking  about  him. 


JEAN-FRANgOIS    MILLET  267 

as  a  man,  not  merely  as  an  illustration  of  some  sacred  text,  or  an  image  in  a  book 
of  allegories,  was  Jean-Fran9ois  Millet,  known  as  the  peasant  painter  of  peas- 
ants. 

He  was  born  at  Gruchy,  a  small  hamlet  on  the  coast  of  Normandy,  where  his 
family,  well  known  in  the  region  for  several  generations,  lived  by  the  labor  of 
their  hands,  cultivating  their  fields  and  exercising  the  simple  virtues  of  that  pas- 
toral life,  without  ambition  and  without  desire  for  change.  This  content  was  a 
part  of  the  religion  of  the  country  and  must  not  be  looked  upon  as  arguing  a  low 
state  of  intelligence  or  of  manners.  Of  their  neighbors  we  have  no  account,  but 
the  Millet  household  contained  many  of  the  elements  that  go  to  sustain  the  in- 
tellectual no  less  than  the  spiritual  life.  If  there  was  plain  living,  there  was  high 
thinking ;  there  were  books  and  of  the  best,  and  more  than  one  member  of  the 
circle  valued  learning  for  its  own  sake.  Millet  owed  much  to  his  grandmother, 
a  woman  of  great  strength  of  character  and  of  a  deeply  religious  nature.  As  his 
godmother  she  gave  him  his  name,  calling  him  Jean,  after  his  father,  and  Fran- 
9ois,  after  Saint  Francis  of  Assisi.  As  is  usual  in  Catholic  countries,  the  boy  was 
called  after  the  name  of  his  patron  saint,  and  in  the  case  of  Millet,  Saint  Francis, 
the  ardent  lover  of  nature,  the  friend  of  the  birds  and  of  all  the  animate  creation, 
was  well  chosen  as  the  guardian  of  one  who  was  to  prove  himself,  all  his  life,  the 
passionate  lover  of  nature. 

The  boyhood  of  Millet  was  passed  at  home.  He  had  no  schooling  except 
some  small  instruction  in  Latin  from  the  village  priest  and  from  a  neighboring 
curate,  but  he  made  good  use  of  what  he  learned.  He  worked  on  the  farm  with 
his  father  and  his  men,  ploughing,  harrowing,  sowing,  reaping,  mowing,  winnow- 
ing— in  a  word,  sharing  actively  and  contentedly  in  all  the  work  that  belongs  to 
the  farmer's  life.  And  in  the  long  winter  evenings  or  in  the  few  hours  of  rest 
that  the  day  afforded,  he  would  hungrily  devour  the  books  that  were  at  hand — 
the  "  Lives  of  the  Saints,"  the  "  Confessions  of  Saint  Augustine,"  the  "  Life  of 
Saint  Jerome,"  and  especially  his  letters,  which  he  read  and  re-read  all  his  life. 
These  and  the  philosophers  of  Port  Royal,  with  Bossuet,  and  Fenelon,  with  the 
Bible  and  Virgil,  were  his  mental  food.  Virgil  and  the  Bible  he  read  always 
in  the  Latin  ;  he  was  so  familiar  with  them  both  that,  when  a  man,  his  biog- 
rapher, Sensier,  says  he  never  met  a  more  eloquent  translator  of  these  two  books, 
When  the  time  came,  therefore,  for  Millet  to  go  up  to  Paris,  he  was  not,  as  has 
been  said  by  some  writer,  an  ignorant  peasant,  but  a  well-taught  man  who  had 
read  much  and  digested  what  he  had  read,  and  knew  good  books  from  bad. 
The  needs  of  his  narrow  life  absorbed  him  so  seriously  that  the  seeds  of  art  that 
lay  hid  in  his  nature  found  a  way  to  the  light  with  difficulty.  But  his  master- 
passion  was  soon  to  assert  itself,  and,  as  in  all  such  cases,  in  an  unexpected 
manner. 

Millet's  attempts  at  drawing  had  hitherto  been  confined  to  studies  made  in 
hours  stolen  from  rest.  He  had  copied  the  engravings  found  in  an  old  family 
Bible,  and  he  had  drawn,  from  his  window,  the  garden,  the  stable,  the  field  run- 
ning down  to  the  edge  of  the  high  cliff,  and  with  the  sea  in  the  horizon,  and  he 


268  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

had  sometimes  tried  his  hand  at  sketching  the  cows  and  sheep  in  the  pasture. 
But  he  was  now  to  take  a  step  in  advance.  Coming  home  one  day  from  church, 
he  walked  behind  an  old  man  bent  with  age  and  feebleness,  painfully  making 
his  way.  The  foreshortening  and  the  movement  of  the  man's  figure  struck  the 
boy  forcibly,  and  in  a  flash  he  discovered  the  secret  of  perspective  and  the  mys- 
tery of  planes.  He  ran  quickly  home,  got  a  pencil  and  drew  from  memory  a  pict- 
ure of  the  old  man,  so  lively  in  its  resemblance  that  as  soon  as  his  parents  saw  it, 
they  recognized  it  and  fell  a-laughing.  Talk  with  his  boy  revealed  to  the  father 
his  son's  strong  desire  to  be  an  artist  ;  but  before  such  a  serious  step  could  be 
taken,  it  was  necessary  to  consult  with  some  person  better  able  to  judge  than  any 
one  in  the  Millet  household.  Cherbourg,  the  nearest  large  town,  was  the  natural 
place  where  to  seek  advice  ;  thither  Millet  and  his  father  repaired,  the  boy  with 
two  drawings  under  his  arm  that  he  had  made  for  the  occasion,  and  these  were 
submitted  to  the  critical  eye  of  Mouchel,  an  old  pupil  of  David,  wiio  eked  out 
the  scanty  living  he  got  by  painting  by  giving  lessons  in  drawing.  When  the 
two  drawings  made  by  young  Millet  were  shown  him  he  refused  to  believe  they 
were  the  work  of  the  lad  of  fifteen.  The  very  subjects  chosen  by  the  boy 
showed  something  out  of  the  common.  One  was  a  sort  of  home  idyl :  two  shep- 
herds were  in  a  little  orchard  close,  one  playing  on  the  flute,  the  other  listening ; 
some  sheep  were  browsing  near.  The  men  wore  the  blouse  and  wooden  shoes 
of  Millet's  country;  the  orchard  was  one  that  belonged  to  his  father.  The  other 
drawing  showed  a  starry  night.  A  man  was  coming  from  the  house  with  loaves 
of  bread  in  his  hand  which  he  gave  to  another  man  who  eagerly  received  them. 
Underneath,  in  Latin,  were  the  words  from  St.  Luke :  "  Though  he  will  not  rise 
and  give  him  because  he  is  his  friend,  yet  because  of  his  importunity  he  will 
rise  and  give  him  as  many  as  he  needeth."  A  friend  of  Millet's,  who  saw  these 
drawings  thirty  years  after,  said  they  were  the  work  of  a  man  who  already  knew 
the  great  significance  of  art,  the  effects  it  was  capable  of,  and  what  were  its 
resources. 

Mouchel  consented  to  receive  Millet  as  a  pupil,  but,  as  it  proved,  he  could 
do  little  for  him  in  the  way  of  direct  teaching.  He  left  the  boy  free  to  follow 
his  own  devices.  He  said  to  him  :  "  Do  whatever  you  wish  ;  choose  whatever 
model  you  find  in  my  studio  that  pleases  you,  and  study  in  the  Museum."  This 
might  not  be  the  course  to  follow  with  every  boy,  but  Mouchel  had  the  artist's 
penetration  and  knew  with  whom  he  had  to  deal. 

The  death  of  Millet's  father  interrupted  his  studies  and  he  returned  home  for 
awhile  to  help  his  mother  on  the  farm.  But  it  was  thought  best  that  he  should 
keep  on  WMth  the  work  he  had  begun.  The  grandmother  urged  his  return  :  "  My 
Frangois,"  she  said,  "  we  must  accept  the  will  of  God.  Thy  father,  my  son,  Jean- 
Louis,  said  that  you  were  to  be  a  painter ;  obey  him,  and  go  back  to  Cherbourg." 

Millet  did  not  need  persuasion  from  his  family.  Friends  in  Cherbourg  urged 
him  to  come  back,  promised  him  commissions,  and  assured  him  a  place  in  the 
studio  of  Langlois,  a  painter  of  a  higher  grade  than  Mouchel,  who  had  recently 
set  up  his  easel  in  the  town.     Once  more  established  at  Cherbourg  Millet  con 


JEAN-FRANgOIS    MILLET  269 

tinued  his  studies  after  the  same  easy  fashion  with  Langlois  as  with  his  former 
master.  Langlois,  who  was  as  much  impressed  by  his  pupil's  talent  as  Mouchel 
had  been  and  willing  to  serve  him,  made  a  personal  appeal  to  the  mayor  and 
council,  asking  that  Millet,  as  a  promising  young  artist  and  one  likely  to  do  credit 
to  the  town,  might  be  assisted  in  going  to  Paris  to  study  under  better  advantages 
than  he  could  enjoy  at  home. 

On  the  strength  of  this  appeal,  the  council  of  Cherbourg  agreed  to  allow  Mil- 
let an  annuity  of  four  hundred  francs,  equal  to  eighty  dollars.  With  this  small 
sum,  and  the  addition  of  two  hundred  francs  given  him  at  parting  by  his  mother 
and  grandmother,  making  one  hundred  and  twenty  dollars  in  all,  Millet  left  his 
quiet  life  in  Normandy  behind  him  and  set  out  for  Paris,  where,  as  his  biogra- 
pher, Sensier,  says,  he  was  to  pass  as  a  captive  the  richest  years  of  his  life. 

Millet  was  twenty-two  years  old  when  he  went  first  to  Paris  and  he  remained 
there,  with  occasional  visits  to  Gruchy  and  Cherbourg,  for  the  next  thirteen 
years.  Paris  was,  from  the  first,  more  than  distasteful  to  him.  He  was  thor- 
oughly unhappy  there.  Outside  the  Louvre  and  the  studios  of  a  few  artist- 
friends,  he  found  nothing  that  appealed  to  what  was  deepest  in  him.  His  first 
experiences  were  unusually  bitter.  The  struggle  with  poverty  was  hard  to  bear, 
but  perhaps  a  more  serious  drawback  was  his  want  of  an  aim  in  art,  of  a  substan- 
tial reason,  so  to  speak,  for  the  profession  he  had  chosen,  leading  him  to  one 
false  move  after  another  in  search  of  a  subject.  Unformed  and  unrecognized  in 
his  mind  lay  the  desire  to  express  in  art  the  life  he  had  left  behind  him  in  Nor- 
mandy ;  but  it  was  long  before  he  arrived  at  the  knowledge  of  himself  and  of  his 
true  vocation.  He  seems  to  have  had  no  one  in  Paris  to  guide  or  direct  him, 
and  he  rather  stumbled  into  the  studio  of  Delaroche,  than  entered  it  deliberately. 
He  made  but  a  brief  stay  there,  and  although  he  won  the  respect  of  his  master, 
who  would  willingly  have  retained  him  as  pupil  and  assistant,  he  was  conscious 
that  he  learned  nothing  from  Delaroche  ;  and  accordingly,  in  company  with 
another  pupil,  Marolles,  who  had  taken  a  great  liking  to  him,  he  left  the  studio 
without  much  ceremony  ;  and  the  two  friends  improvised  a  studio  and  a  lodging 
for  themselves  in  a  garret  in  a  poor  quarter  of  the  city,  and  began  their  search 
for  a  means  of  pleasing  the  public.  But  the  way  was  not  opened  to  either  of 
them  ;  they  could  not  sell  what  they  painted,  and  they  were  reduced  to  serious 
straits.  It  was  not  the  fault  of  the  public.  Marolles  was  but  an  indifferent 
painter  at  any  time,  and  Millet  would  not  have  blamed  the  public  for  its  indif- 
ference to  subjects  in  which  he  himself  took  no  real  interest. 

Millet  was  at  a  loss  what  to  do  for  bread.  His  mind  ran  back  continually 
to  his  rural  life  at  Gruchy.  "  What  if  I  should  paint  men  mowing  or  winnow- 
ing?" he  said  to  Marolles;  "their  movements  are  picturesque  !  "  "You  could 
not  sell  them,"  replied  his  friend.  "  Well,  then,  what  do  you  say  to  fauns  and 
dryads  ?  "  "  Who  in  Paris  cares  for  fauns  and  dryads  ? "  "  What  shall  I  do, 
then  ?"  said  Millet  in  despair.  "What  does  the  public  like?"  "  It  likes  Bou- 
cher's Cupids,  Watteau's  Pastorals,  nudities,  anecdotes,  and  copies  of  the  past." 
It  was  hard    for  Millet,  but  hunger  drove  him.      lie  would  not  appeal  to  his 


270  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

family,  life  was  as  difficult  for  them  as  for  him.  But  before  yielding  he  would 
make  one  more  trial,  painting  something  from  his  own  fancy.  He  made  a  small 
picture  representing  "  Charity  " — a  sad-faced  woman  cherishing  three  children  in 
her  arms.  He  carried  it  to  the  dealers  :  not  one  of  them  would  buy  it.  He 
came  back  to  Marolles.      "  Give  me  a  subject,"  he  said,  "and  I  will  paint  it." 

To  this  time  belong  the  pictures  for  which  Millet  has  been  much  criticised  by 
people  who  did  not  appreciate  his  position.  Some  of  them  recall  Watteau,  others 
Boucher,  but  they  have  a  charm,  a  grace  of  their  own  ;  they  are  far  from  being 
copies  of  these  men.  Others  were  fanciful  subjects  to  which  Marolles  gave 
names  likely  to  attract  the  notice  of  picture-buyers  in  search  of  a  subject.  But 
all  was  in  vain.  The  dealers  were  obstinate  :  the  public  unsympathetic.  The 
highest  price  that  was  offered  was  never  above  twenty  francs,  or  five  dollars.  Yet 
with  this  in  his  pocket,  Millet  deemed  himself  already  on  the  high  road  to  fort- 
une, and  saw  the  day  not  distant  when  he  could  paint  at  his  pleasure  the  rustic 
subjects,  memories  of  his  home,  that  had  always  been  in  his  mind. 

Several  times  in  the  course  of  this  hard  novitiate,  Millet  had  escaped  from 
Paris  for  a  visit  to  his  own  country.  At  one  time  he  had  remained  for  a  year  at 
Cherbourg,  where  he  painted  portraits  for  such  small  sums  as  he  could  get,  and 
here  he  and  one  of  his  sitters,  a  young  girl  of  Cherbourg,  falling  in  love  with  one 
another,  were  married.  The  marriage  only  added,  as  might  have  been  fore- 
seen, to  Millet's  troubles  :  his  wife's  health  was  always  delicate  ;  after  her  marriage 
it  became  worse,  and  she  died  four  years  after  in  Paris.  Not  long  after  her  death 
Millet  married  again,  and  this  proved  a  fortunate  venture.  His  wife  came  with 
him  to  Paris,  and  the  struggle  with  life  began  anew.  The  turning-point  in  the 
long  period  of  Millet's  uncertainties  and  disappointments  with  himself  came  in 
1849,  when  the  political  troubles  of  the  time,  and  the  visit  of  the  cholera,  com- 
bined to  drive  him  and  his  family  from  Paris.  They  took  refuge  at  Barbizon,  a 
small  hamlet  on  the  outskirts  of  the  Forest  of  Fontainebleau,  and  here,  in  the 
place  that  was  to  be  forever  associated  with  his  name  and  work.  Millet  passed, 
with  few  interruptions,  the  remaining  years  of  his  life. 

The  phrase  so  often  heard  to-day,  "The  Barbizon  School,"  is  rather  wider 
than  a  strict  interpretation  would  warrant,  since  Millet  and  Rousseau  were  the  only 
ones  of  the  group  who  lived  in  the  village.  Corot  was  not  acquainted  with  Mil- 
let. Decamps  was  never  in  Millet's  house  except  as  a  rare  visitor  to  his  studio. 
Diaz  lived  in  Paris.  Jacque,  the  painter  of  sheep,  was  a  friend  of  Millet,  and  for 
a  time  at  least  lived  at  Barbizon  in  the  house  where  he  lodged  before  he  procured 
a  home  of  his  own.  The  artistic  relationship  between  these  artists  is  slight,  ex- 
cept in  the  case  of  Rousseau  and  Diaz,  and  even  there  it  is  only  occasionally  to 
be  detected.  All  these  men,  with  Dupre,  Courbet,  and  Delacroix,  were  counted 
heretics  in  art  by  the  ^Academy  and  the  official  critics,  and  as  Millet  was  the 
most  marked  figure  in  the  group  and  was  greatly  admired  and  respected  by  all 
who  composed  it,  it  was  perhaps  natural  that  they  should  be  considered  by  the 
public  as  disciples  of  the  peasant  painter  of  Barbizon. 

Here,  then,  at  Barbizon,  Millet  lived  for  the  remaining  twenty-seven  years  of 


JEAN-FRANgOIS    MILLET  271 

his  life,  dividing  his  day  between  the  labors  of  his  farm  in  the  mornino-  hours, 
painting  in  his  studio  in  the  afternoon — he  always  preferred  the  half-light  for 
painting — and  in  the  evening  enjoying  the  society  of  his  wife  and  children  and 
of  such  friends  as  might  join  the  circle.  Occasional  visits  to  Paris,  to  the  o-al- 
leries,  and  to  the  studios  of  his  artist-circle,  kept  him  in  touch  with  the  world  to 
which  he  belonged.  His  books,  too,  were  his  unfailing  companions,  though  he 
never  cared  to  stray  far  beyond  the  circle  of  his  youthful  friendships,  Homer,  and 
Virgil,  and  especially  the  Bible,  which  he  looked  upon  as  the  book  of  painters, 
the  inexhaustible  source  of  the  noblest  and  most  touching  subjects,  capable  of 
expression  in  the  grandest  forms. 

But  it  was  in  the  rural  life  about  him,  the  life  in  which  he  actively  shared, 
that  he  found  the  world  wherein  he  could  pour  all  his  thoughts,  feelings,  and  ex- 
periences with  the  certainty  of  seeing  them  emerge  in  forms  answering  to  his 
conception.  It  was  not  until  he  came  to  Barbizon  that  be  began  truly  to  live  the 
artist-life  as  he  understood  it,  where  the  work  is  a  faithful  reflection  of  the  only 
things  a  man  really  cares  for — the  things  he  knows  by  heart.  In  the  pictures 
painted  at  Barbizon,  and  in  the  multitude  of  slight  sketches  for  subjects  never 
painted,  with  finished  drawings  and  pastels,  Millet  has  composed  a  series  of  moral 
eclogues  well  worthy  of  a  place  with  those  of  Virgil  and  Theocritus.  All  the 
world  knows  them  ;  all  the  world  loves  them  :  the  "  Mother  Feeding  Her  Chil- 
dren," "The  Peasant  Grafting,"  "The  First  Step,"  "Going  to  Work,"  "  The 
Sower,"  "The  Gleaners,"  "The  Sheep-Shearing,"  "The  Angelus" — even  to  name 
them  would  carry  us  far  beyond  our  limits.  They  made  the  fame  of  Millet  while 
he  still  lived,  although  the  pecuniary  reward  of  his  labors  was  not  what  they  de- 
served nor  what  it  would  have  been  had  he  earlier  found  his  true  way  or  had  his 
life  been  prolonged  to  the  normal  limit.  He  died  in  1875  at  the  age  of  sixty- 
one.  Since  his  death  more  than  one  of  his  pictures  has  been  sold  at  a  price  ex- 
ceeding all  that  he  earned  during  his  whole  lifetime.  Seen  from  the  world's  side, 
there  was  much  in  his  life  that  was  sad  and  discouraging,  but  from  the  spiritual 
side  there  was  far  more  to  cheer  and  uplift.  His  private  life  was  honorable  and 
happy,  his  friends  were  many  and  among  the  chosen  ones  of  the  time,  and  he 
had  the  happiness  of  seeing  his  work  accepted  and  rated  at  something  like  its  true 
worth  before  he  left  it. 


(^^^^-irA 


tr 


272 


ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 


MEISSONIER* 

By  Clarence  Cook 
(1813-1891) 


A" 


MONG  the  maiw  beautiful  paintings  col- 
lected in  the  Metropolitan  Museum  of 
Art  of  New  York,  there  is  one  that  always  at- 
tracts a  crowd,  on  the  free-days  and  holidays 
when  the  general  public  finds  admission.  This 
is  the  picture  called  simply,  "  Friedland  :  1807," 
and  representing  the  soldiers  of  Napoleon  salut- 
ing the  emperor  at  the  battle  of  Friedland.  It 
was  painted  by  Jean  Louis  Meissonier  for  the 
late  A.  T.  Stewart,  of  New  York,  who  paid  for 
it  what  seemed  a  very  large  sum,  $60,000  ;  but 
when  Mr.  Stewart  died,  and  his  pictures  were 
sold  at  auction,  this  painting  brought  the  still 
larger  sum  of  $66,000,  showing  that  a  great 
many  people  admired  the  work,  and  were  will- 
ing to  pay  a  good  price  for  it.  The  picture 
was  bought  by  Judge  Hilton,  of  New  York,  and  was  presented  by  him  to  the 
Metropolitan  Museum  as  a  memorial  of  the  long  friendship  that  had  existed  be- 
tween himself  and  Mr.  Stewart.  No  doubt  the  facts  of  the  high  price  paid  for 
the  picture,  and  that  a  gift  of  such  value  should  be  made  to  the  Museum,  have 
caused  a  great  many  people  to  look  at  the  painting  with  more  interest  than  they 
would,  had  the  circumstances  been  less  uncommon.  But  a  great  many  more  peo- 
ple find  this  picture  interesting  for  its  own  sake  ;  they  are  moved  rather  by  the 
spirited  way  in  which  it  tells  its  story,  and  find  their  curiosity  excited  by  the 
studious  accuracv  shown  by  the  artist  in  the  painting  of  every  detail. 

The  scene  of  the  action  is  a  field  that  has  been  planted  with  grain  which  now 
lies  trampled  under  the  feet  of  men  and  horses.  The  turning-point  in  the  battle 
has  been  reached,  and  in  the  joy  of  coming  victory,  the  body-guard  of  the  em- 
peror, spurring  their  jaded  horses  to  the  hillock  where  he  sits  on  his  white  charger 
surrounded  by  his  mounted  staff,  salute  him  with  loud  cries  as  they  rush  madly 
by  him.  Napoleon,  calm  and  self-possessed,  returns  the  salute,  but  it  is  plain  his 
thoughts  are  busier  with  the  battle  that  is  raging  in  the  distance  than  with  these 
demonstrations  of  his  body-guard's  loyalty.  This  picture  was  the  favorite  work 
of  the  artist ;  he  calls  it,  "  the  life  and  joy  of  my  studio,"  and  he  is  said  to  have 
worked  on  it  at  intervals  during  fifteen  years. 

Somebody  has  said  that  "genius"  means  nothing  but  "taking  pains."  In  that 
case,  Meissonier  must  have  been  a  man  of  genius,  for,  with  whatever  he  painted, 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


/ 


MEISSONII 


IV. 


1013-1891) 


A;m  '..'i>  i-i       Lite       I J  1. 1 
lected    in    th^ 
Ai :  irk,  thei 

s  a  crowd,  on  the  liee-(! 

,.  .ivii  the  genen''  ■•"'•'i'''  "'"'^  ,       i,,,- 

is  the  picture  c  1:   1807," 

nting  the  soldi".  ipoleon  salut- 

the  battle  oi  i'riedland.     It 

,  ,  T  ,>,,;.  ^T,.;.r<q(-„-,iej.  for  the 

who  paid  for 
;  but 

•e 

■1 

auaxA  a'iiaiJioaaiaM 

aai'/ioaTafla  aaaaoao 


imself  and  Mr.  Stewar  tacts  of  the  high  price  paid  for 
tlic  picture,  and  that  a  gift  of  such  value  should  be  made  to  the  Museum,  have 
cau'-'  '  vr,. ,.  nv.ni  ,,.  ,,oir'  1,^  lfw-)lt  at  the  painting  with  more  interest  than  they 
woi  less  uncommon.  But  a  great  many  more  peo- 
ple find  th  ke  ;  they  are  rather  by  the 
spirited  \va 
studiou^'  ^ 

Th.  .V 
lies  trai ! . 


him.     Napoleon,  e. 

isier  witn  uic  1 
-., ..  of  his  body-gu 
:  ;  he  calls  it,   "  the 
>  intervals  durir: 


...,^cr 

nadly 

it  is  plain  his 

.  n'ith  these 

..  >  orite  work 

said  to  have 

:ins.      j.n  mat 
:r  he  paintci. 


I — i 

a 

w 

K 

m 
t: 

Li 

a: 
o 


MEISSONIER  273 

were  it  small  or  great,  he  took  infinite  pains,  never  content  until  he  had  done 
everything  in  his  power  to  show  things  exactly  as  they  were.  Thus,  in  the  pict- 
ure we  have  just  been  describing,  we  may  be  sure  that  we  know,  from  looking  at 
it,  exactly  how  Napoleon  was  dressed  on  the  day  of  Friedland,  and  also  how  each 
member  of  his  military  staff  was  dressed ;  not  a  button,  nor  a  strap,  nor  anv 
smallest  detail  but  has  been  faithfully  copied  from  the  thing  itself,  while  every 
head  in  the  group  is  a  trustworthy  portrait.  \Vhen  it  was  not  possible  to  get  the 
actual  dress  worn  by  the  person  he  was  painting,  Meissonier  spared  no  pains  nor 
money  to  obtain  an  exact  copy.  How  it  was  in  the  case  of  the  "  Friedland,"  we 
do  not  know,  but  when  he  painted  the  "  March  to  Paris,"  Meissonier  borrowed 
from  the  Museum,  in  Paris,  where  relics  of  all  the  kings  of  France  are  kept  (the 
Mus^e  des  Souverains),  the  famous  "little  gray  riding-coat"  worn  by  Napoleon  at 
the  battle  of  the  Pyramids  and  in  other  engagements.  This  coat,  Meissonier  had 
copied  by  a  tailor,  with  the  minutest  accuracy,  and  it  was  then  worn  bv  the  model 
while  he  was  painting  the  picture.  The  same  pains  were  taken  with  the  cuiras- 
siers who  are  dashing  across  the  front  of  the  picture  in  the  "  Friedland."  As  will 
be  seen  on  looking  closely,  one  model  served  for  all  the  men  in  the  front  rank, 
but  as  the  uniform  was  the  same  it  was  only  necessary  to  vary  the  attitude.  The 
uniform  and  all  the  accoutrements  were  carefully  reproduced  by  workmen  from 
originals  of  the  time,  borrowed  by  Meissonier  for  the  purpose,  and  the  model  was 
then  mounted  on  a  jointed  wooden  horse  and  made  to  take  the  attitude  required  : 
the  action  of  the  horse  was  as  carefully  studied  from  that  of  the  living  animal. 
By  the  time  that  Meissonier  came  to  paint  this  picture,  he  was  so  famous  an  art- 
ist, and  had  gained  such  a  place  in  the  world,  that  he  could  have  almost  anything 
he  asked  for  to  aid  him  in  his  work.  So,  when,  with  the  same  desire  for  accuracy 
that  he  had  shown  in  painting  other  parts  of  the  picture,  he  came  to  paint  the 
trampled  grain,  the  Government,  or  so  we  are  told,  bought  the  use  of  a  field  of 
ripe  grain  and  lent  Meissonier  the  services  of  a  company  of  cuirassiers  who 
were  set  to  dashing  about  in  it  until  they  had  got  it  into  proper  condition  ! 
We  can  see  that  the  cost  of  all  this  accuracy  would,  in  the  end,  amount  to  a 
considerable  sum,  and  when  we  reckon  the  time  of  an  artist  so  distinguished  as 
Meissonier,  it  is  not  so  surprising  as  it  may  have  appeared  at  first,  that  his  pict- 
ure should  have  brought  so  much  money. 

Of  course,  Meissonier  did  not  come  all  at  once  to  fame  and  prosperity. 
The  rewards  he  gained  were  such  as  are  earned  only  by  hard  and  constant  labor. 
When  he  came  to  Paris  about  the  year  1832,  from  Lyons,  where  he  was  born,  he 
was  about  nineteen  years  old.  Mis  parents  were  in  humble  circumstances,  and 
would  seem  to  have  been  able  to  do  nothing  to  advance  the  lad,  who  arrived  in 
Paris  with  little  money  in  his  pocket,  and  with  no  friends  at  hand.  He  had, 
however,  the  materials  out  of  which  friends  and  money  are  made  :  health,  a  gen- 
erous spirit,  energy,  and  a  clear  purpose,  and  with  these  he  went  to  work.  We 
do  not  hear  much  about  his  early  life  in  Paris.  When  he  first  appears  in  sight, 
he  is  working  in  the  same  studio  with  Daubigny,  the  landscape-painter,  the  two 
painting  pictures  for  a  dollar  the  square  yard,  religious  pictures  probably,  and 
18 


274  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

probaby  also  copies,  to  be  sent  into  the  country  and  hung  up  in  the  parish 
churches.  Although  this  may  have  seemed  like  hardship  at  the  time,  yet  there  is 
no  doubt  it  was  good  practice,  for  among  artists  we  are  told  it  is  an  accepted 
doctrine  that  in  order  to  paint  on  a  small  scale  really  well,  you  must  be  able  to 
paint  on  a  larger.  And  it  is  said  that  Meissonier  was  in  the  habit  all  his  life  of 
making  life-size  studies  in  order  to  keep  his  style  from  falling  into  pettiness.  So, 
after  all,  the  painting  of  these  big  pictures  may  have  been  a  useful  ordeal  for  the 
artist  who  for  the  next  sixty  years  was  to  reap  fame  by  painting  small  ones. 

While  he  was  earning  a  scanty  living  by  this  hack-work,  Meissonier  found 
time  to  paint  two  pictures  which  he  sent  to  the  Salon  of  1836.  One  of  these 
attracted  the  attention  of  a  clever  artist,  Tony  Johannot,  who  introduced  him  to 
L^on  Cogniet,  with  whom  he  studied  for  a  time,  but  from  whom  he  learned  but 
little.  The  mechanism  of  his  art  he  had  pretty  well  mastered  already,  as  was 
shown  by  the  Salon  accepting  his  early  pictures,  and  the  chief  advantage  he 
gained  from  his  stay  in  Cogniet's  studio  was  a  wider  acquaintance  with  the  world 
of  artists  ;  for  Cogniet  was  a  favorite  teacher,  and  had  a  great  many  pupils,  not 
a  few  of  whom  became  distinguished  painters.  But  his  style  of  painting  was  not 
one  to  attract  Meissonier,  who  was  ambitious  to  paint  like  the  old  Dutch  artists, 
Terburg,  Metzu,  Mieris,  and  others,  who  have  the  charm  that  their  pictures  are 
finished  with  the  most  exquisite  minuteness,  and  )'et  treated  in  such  a  large  way 
that,  after  awhile,  we  forget  the  microscopic  wonder  of  the  performance  and 
think  only  of  the  skill  the  artist  has  shown  in  painting  character.  Meissonier 
was  the  first  artist  to  bring  back  into  favor  the  Dutch  school  of  painting  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  Louis  XIV.,  who  set  the  fashion  in  everything  in  his  day, 
had  set  the  fashion  of  despising  the  Dutch  painters,  and  the  French  people  had 
never  unlearned  the  lesson.  It  was  Meissonier  who  brought  back  the  taste,  and 
taught  the  public  to  admire  these  small  panels  where  interest  in  the  subject  is  for 
the  most  part  lost  in  the  exquisite  beauty  of  the  painting  and  where  the  Dutch 
painters  of  similar  subjects  are  successfully  met  on  their  own  ground  and  equalled 
in  every  respect  except  in  the  charm  of  color. 

There  is  an  old  saying:  "  Imitation  is  the  sincerest  mode  of  flatteiy  ;  "  and 
Meissonier's  immediate  success  with  the  public  was  the  signal  for  a  bevy  of  imi- 
tators to  try  to  win  a  like  success  by  like  methods.  Some  of  these  artists  were 
very  clever,  but  an  imitator  is  but  an  imitator  after  all,  and  is  more  apt  to  call 
attention  to  his  model  than  to  himself.  It  must  be  admitted  that  Meissonier 
himself  has  suffered  somewhat  in  the  same  way  :  the  evident  fact  that  his  meth- 
ods of  painting  were  inspired  by  the'study  of  the  Dutch  masters  has  led  to  his 
being  called  an  imitator,  and  his  pictures  are  often  compared,  and  not  to  their 
advantage,  with  those  of  his  models.  Meissonier  is,  however,  very  much  more 
than  an  imitator  ;  he  was  inspired  by  the  Dutch  painters,  but  he  soon  found  a 
way  of  his  own,  and  he  has  put  so  much  of  himself  into  his  work,  that  the  charge 
of  imitation  long  since  ceased  to  be  brought  against  him. 

While  he  was  still  not  much '  known  to  the  public,  the  Duke  of  Orleans 
bought  of  him,  for  six  hundred  francs,  a  picture  that  to-day  is  worth  thirty  thou- 


MEISSONIER  275 

sand  francs.  As  is  usual  in  such  affairs,  the  purchase  was  made,  not  by  the  duke 
in  person,  but  by  an  agent :  in  this  case,  it  was  his  secretary,  M.  Adaline,  who 
bought  the  picture  from  Meissonier,  who  as  an  acknowledgment  of  the  service 
gave  the  secretary  a  water-color  drawing  which,  to-day,  like  everything  coming 
from  the  hand  of  Meissonier,  would  bring  the  owner  a  good  round  sum  if  of- 
fered for  sale. 

In  1865,  Meissonier's  son  Charles,  himself  a  very  good  painter,  went  to  a  cos- 
tume-ball dressed  like  a  Fleming  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  looking  as  if  he 
had  stepped  out  of  a  picture  by  Terburg.  The  costume  had  been  made  with  the 
greatest  accuracy,  and  Meissonier  was  so  pleased  with  his  son's  appearance  that 
he  made  a  stud\^  and  sold  it  for  two  thousand  francs.  Twenty  years  after,  in 
18S4,  hearing  that  it  was  to  be  sold  at  auction,  and  desiring,  out  of  affection  for  his 
son,  to  have  the  study  back  again,  he  asked  his  friend,  M.  Petit,  to  buy  it  for 
him,  at  whatever  cost.  A  rich  Parisian,  M.  Secretan,  who  had  a  collection  of 
pictures  since  become  famous — it  was  to  him  that  Millet's  "L'Angelus"  be- 
longed— and  who  had  such  an  admiration  for  Meissonier  and  his  work  that  he 
had  paid  no  less  than  four  hundred  thousand  francs  for  his  picture  "  Les  Cuiras- 
siers," hearing  from  M.  Petit  of  Meissonier's  desire  for  the  portrait  of  his  son, 
bought  the  picture  for  twenty-five  thousand  francs  and  presented  it  to  the  artist. 
These  stories  are  told  only  as  illustrations  of  the  growth  of  Meissonier's  reputa- 
tion and  of  the  increased  number  of  people  who  desire  to  have  an  example  of 
his  work.  The  rise  in  value  of  a  small  sketch  of  a  single  figure,  from  $500  to 
$5,000,  in  fifteen  years,  is  no  greater  in  proportion  than  has  happened  in  the  case 
of  every  one  of  Meissonier's  pictures,  drawings,  studies,  and  even  his  slight 
sketches,  on  some  of  which  originally  he  would  have  placed  no  value  at  all. 
Yet  everything  he  left  behind  him,  even  unconsidered  trifles,  are  found  to  be  of 
value,  and  the  sale  of  the  contents  of  his  studio  just  ended  in  Paris  brought 
nearly  five  hundred  thousand  francs,  although  the  collection  contained  not  a  sin- 
gle finished  picture  of  importance,  but  was  made  up  almost  entirely  of  unfinished 
studies  and  of  sketches. 

Meissonier's  industry  was  constant  and  untiring.  It  is  told  of  him  that  he 
rarely  had  the  pencil  or  the  brush  out  of  his  hand  when  in  the  house,  and  that 
when  he  called  at  a  friend's  house  and  was  kept  waiting  he  used  the  spare  min- 
utes in  sketching  upon  the  first  piece  of  paper  that  he  found  at  hand.  One  of 
his  friends,  who  knew  of  this  habit,  collected  in  the  course  of  many  visits  he  re- 
ceived from  the  artist  enough  of  these  scraps  to  fill  a  small  album  ;  while  it  is 
told  of  another  of  his  friends  that  he  instructed  his  servant  to  put  beside  Meis- 
sonier's coffee-cup  after  dinner  a  number  of  bits  of  paper  of  the  size  of  cigarette- 
papers  but  of  better  quality  on  which  Meissonier  in  his  absent  way  would  fall  to 
drawing  as  he  chatted  with  his  companions.  After  dinner  these  jottings  re- 
mained as  a  valuable  memorial  of  his  visit.  Perhaps  if  they  were  all  collected, 
these  slight  affairs  might  bring  enough  at  auction  to  pay  for  all  the  dinners  to 
which  the  prudent  host  had  invited  the  artist. 

The  world  of  subjects  included  in  Meissonier's  art  was  a  very  narrow  one,  and 


276 


ARTISTS  AND   AUTHORS 


was  not  calculated  to  interest  men  and  women  in  general.  The  nearest  that  he 
came  to  striking  the  popular  note  was  in  his  Napoleon  subjects,  and  beside  the 
excellence  of  the  painting,  these  pictures  really  make  a  valuable  series  of  historical 
documents  by  reason  of  their  accuracy.  But  the  greater  number  of  the  pictures 
which  he  left  behind  him  are  chiefly  interesting  from  the  beautiful  way  in  which 
they  are  painted  :  we  accept  the  subject  for  the  sake  of  the  art.  The  world  re- 
warded him  for  all  this  patient  labor,  this  exquisite  workmanship,  by  an  immense 
fortune  that  enabled  him  to  live  in  splendor,  and  to  be  generous  without  stint. 
From  the  humble  lodgings  of  his  youth  in  the  Rue  des  Ecouffes,  he  passed,  in 
time,  to  the  palace  in  the  Place  Malsherbes  where  he  spent  the  latter  half  of  his 
long  life  in  luxurious  surroundings  :  pictures  and  statues,  rich  furniture,  tapestries 
and  armor  and  curiosities  of  art  from  every  land.  But  the  visitor,  after  passing 
through  all  this  splendor,  came  upon  the  artist  in  a  studio,  ample  and  well  lighted 
indeed,  but  furnished  only  for  work,  where,  to  the  end  of  his  life,  he  pursued  his 
industrious  calling  with  all  the  energy  and  ardor  of  youth.  He  died  in  1891,  and 
was  buried  by  the  government  with  all  the  honors  that  befitted  one  of  her  most 
illustrious  citizens. 


(^^^^-Tr:f<. 


e- 


ROSA  BONHEUR* 


By  Clarence  Cook 


(born   1822) 


fiiRL  of  something  over  ten,  of  sturdy  build,  with  a  dark  complex- 
ion, deep  blue  eyes,  and  strong  features  crowned  by  a  head  of  clus- 
tering curls,  is  sitting  in  the  window  of  a  plainly  furnished  room, 
high  up  in  an  apartment-house  in  Paris.  In  a  cage  at  her  side  is  a 
parrot,  which,  with  its  head  on  one  side,  is  gravely  calling  out  the 
letters  of  the  alphabet,  while  the  child  as  gravely  repeats  them,  interrupting  the 
lesson  every  now  and  then  by  a  visit  to  the  other  side  of  the  room,  where  a 
pet  lamb  greets  its  young  mistress  with  a  friendly  bleat. 

This  is  our  first  glimpse  of  Rosalie,  known  now  to  all  the  world  as  Rosa 
Bonheur,  the  painter  of  "The  Horse  Fair"  and  of  many  another  picture,  which 
have  earned  for  her  the  distinction  of  the  best  animal-painter  of  her  time. 

Her  father's  family  belonged  to  Bordeaux.  Raymond  Bonheur  had  gone  up 
as  a  youth  to  Paris  to  study  art.  After  the  usual  apprenticeship  to  privation 
which  art  exacts  from  her  servants,  he  had  become  moderately  successful,  when 
the  condition  of  his  parents,  now  old  and  poorly-off,  moved  him  to  return  to  Bor- 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


ROSA    BONHEUR 


277 


iff. 


deaux  and  do  what  he  could  to  make  their  life  easier.  As  the  chances  for  a  pro- 
fessional artist  were  small,  he  adopted  the  modest  employment  of  drawing-teacher. 
His  skill  soon  brought  him  pupils  ;  among  them  a  young  lady  from  Altona,  be- 
tween whom  and  her  teacher  a  mutual  in- 
terest sprang  up  which  led  to  their  mar- 
riage. Raymond  Bonheur  brought  his  wife 
home  to  his  father's  house,  where  she  was 
welcomed  as  a  daughter,  and  for  the  brief 
term  of  her  life  all  went  well.  What  the 
husband  earned  by  his  drawing-lessons,  the 
wife  supplemented  by  her  lessons  in  music  ; 
but  this  happiness  was  not  to  last.  The 
parents  of  Raymond  Bonheur  died,  and 
then,  after  not  more  than  twelve  years  of 
marriage,  the  wife  died,  leaving  behind  her 
four  children,  Rosalie,  Frangois  -  Auguste, 
Jules-Isidore,  and  Juliette. 

Rosalie  is  the  best  known  of  these  four 
children  of  Raymond  Bonheur  ;  but  each 
of  them  has  honorably  connected  his  name 
with  the  art  of  modern  France.  Frangois- 
Auguste  has  a  reputation  as  an  animal- 
painter  almost  equal  to  that  of  his  sister  Rosa.  A  fine  picture  painted  by  him, 
"  Cattle  in  the  Forest  of  Fontainebleau,"  was  once  the  property  of  the  late  A.  T. 
Stewart.  His  merit  secured  him  the  Cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honor  in  1867. 
He  died  in  1880.  The  other  brother,  Jules-Isidore,  has  gained  distinction  as  a 
sculptor  of  animals  ;  most  of  his  work  is  on  a  small  scale,  but  he  has  designed 
some  large  pieces  that  decorate  his  sister's  chateau  near  Fontainebleau.  Juliette 
Bonheur  married  a  M.  Peyrol,  and  joining  her  family-name  to  his,  is  known  in  the 
art-world  as  Mme.  Peyrol  Bonheur.  It  is  thus  she  signs  her  pictures,  mostly  still- 
life  and  animal  subjects,  which  have  gained  for  her  a  good  position  among  the 
minor  artists  of  France. 

Rosa,  the  eldest  of  the  family,  born  in  1822,  was  ten  years  old  when  her 
mother  died.  Not  long  after,  Raymond  Bonheur  decided  to  leave  Bordeaux  and 
to  return  to  Paris,  where  the  chances  for  professional  success  were  better  tlian  in 
a  provincial  town,  and  where  there  were  greater  opportunities  for  the  education 
of  his  young  children.  The  change  proved  very  distasteful,  however,  to  the  little 
ones.  Accustomed  to  the  comparative  freedom  of  the  town  in  which  they  had 
been  brought  up,  and  where  their  family  had  been  so  long  rooted  that  their  circle 
of  friends  and  relatives  gave  them  playmates  and  companions  in  plenty,  they 
found  themselves  very  lonely  in  Paris,  where  they  were  reduced  for  a  good  part 
of  the  time  to  such  amusement  as  they  could  find  in  the  narrow  quarters  of  their 
rooms  on  the  sixth  floor  of  an  apartment-house.  It  is  not  the  custom  in  Paris 
for  the  children,  even  of  the  poor,  to  make  a  playground  of  the  street,  and  our 


278  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

little  ones  had  nobody-  to  walk  out  with  them  hut  an  old  servant  who  had  come 
with  them  from  Bordeaux,  and  who  was  ill-fitted,  for  all  her  virtues,  to  take  a 
mother's  place  to  the  children.  She  was  honest  and  faithful,  but  like  all  of  her 
class,  she  liked  routine  and  order,  and  she  could  make  no  allowances  for  the  rest- 
lessness of  her  bright-minded  charge.  Rosa  was  her  especial  torment ;  the  black 
sheep  of  the  brood.  Household  tasks  she  despised,  and  study,  as  it  was  pursued 
in  the  successive  schools  to  which  her  despairing  father  sent  her,  had  no  charms 
for  her.  Her  best  playmates  were  animals  ;  the  horses  and  dogs  she  saw  in  the 
streets  and  which  she  fearlessly  accosted  ;  the  sheep  that  found  itself  queerly 
lodged  on  the  top  floor  of  a  city  house  ;  and  the  parrot  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
was  not  only  her  playmate  but  her  schoolmaster. 

There  came  a  time  when  the  charge  of  such  a  child,  so  averse  to  rules  and  so 
given  to  strange  ways  of  passing  her  time,  became  too  much  for  the  old  servant 
with  her  orthodox  views  of  life,  and  she  persuaded  Rosa's  father  to  put  her  as  a 
day-scholar  with  the  nuns  at  Chaillot,  a  small  suburb  of  Paris.  How  it  happened 
that  she  was  allowed  to  go  back  and  forth  alone,  between  home  and  school,  we 
do  not  know  ;  but  it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  if  she  were  irregular  in  her  hours ; 
if,  one  day,  she  set  the  nuns  wondering  why  she  did  not  appear  at  school-open- 
ing, and  another  day  put  the  old  servant  into  a  twitter  because  she  did  not  come 
home  in  season.  The  truth  was,  she  had  found  that  there  was  something  better 
in  Paris  than  streets  and  shops  and  tall  houses ;  she  had  discovered  a  wood  there, 
a  veritable  forest,  with  trees,  and  pools  of  water,  and  birds,  and  wild  flowers,  and 
though  this  enchanted  spot  which  citizens  called  the  Bois  de  Boulogne — not 
then  a  formal  park  as  it  is  to-day — was  off  the  road  to  Chaillot,  yet  it  was  not  so 
far  that  she  need  fear  getting  lost  in  going  there  or  in  coming  back.  No 
wonder,  then,  if,  once  this  way  discovered  of  escape  from  tiresome  school  duties, 
it  was  travelled  so  often  by  Rosalie,  and  that  her  school-work  became  in  conse- 
quence so  unsatisfactory  that  at  length  the  patient  nuns  remonstrated.  They 
advised  Rosa's  father,  since  she  neither  would  nor  could  learn  anything  from 
books,  that  it  would  be  better  to  put  her  to  some  useful  trade  by  which  she 
might  earn  her  living ;  and  the  good  sisters  suggested — dressmaking  !  The 
wisdom  of  these  ladies,  who  could  not  see  that  they  were  dealing  with  the  last 
woman  in  the  world  to  whom  dressmaking  could  be  interesting,  was  matched  by 
that  of  the  father,  who  showed  himself  so  blind  to  the  character  of  his  daughter 
that  he  resolved  to  act  at  once  upon  the  advice  of  the  nuns  ;  and  without  con- 
sulting the  wishes  of  poor  Rosalie  he  apprenticed  her  straightway  to  a  Parisian 
dressmaker.  The  docile  girl  allowed  the  yoke  to  be  slipped  over  her  head  with- 
out complaint,  but  the  confinement  wore  upon  her  health  and  spirits,  and  after  a 
short  trial  the  experiment  had  to  be  abandoned.  Her  father  yielded  to  her  en- 
treaties and  took  her  home. 

The  girl  was  long  in  coming  to  a  knowledge  of  herself.  Although  she  was 
to  be,  in  time,  a  famous  artist,  the  familiar  legend  of  the  biographers  is  wanting 
in  her  case  ;  we  read  nothing  about  scribbled  books  or  walls  defaced  by  childish 
sketches,  nor  does  she  appear  to  have  handled  a  pencil  or  a  brush  until  she  was 


DliUUFE  PINXIT. 


ROSA    BONHEUR. 


ROSA   BONHEUR  279 

a  girl  well  grown.  Her  father's  means  were  not  sufficient  to  give  Rosa  or  his 
other  children  an  education  such  as  he  could  wish  ;  but  an  expedient  suggested 
itself  in  his  perplexity  over  this  latest  experiment  in  providing  for  his  eldest 
daughter :  he  proposed  to  the  principal  of  a  young  ladies'  school  where  he  taught 
drawing,  that  his  services  should  be  accepted  in  payment  of  Rosa's  education. 
The  offer  was  accepted,  and  in  the  regular  course  of  study  Rosa  became  a  mem- 
ber of  her  father's  drawing-class.  It  was  not  long  before  she  surpassed  all  her 
school-fellows  in  that  department,  and  found  herself  for  the  first  time  in  her  life 
in  possession  of  the  key  to  that  happiness  which  consists  in  knowing  what  we 
can  do,  and  feeling  the  strength  within  us  to  do  it.  Some  of  the  biographers  of 
Rosa's  life  speak  of  unhappy  days  at  this  school :  the  richer  girls  made  sport 
of  the  dress  of  the  drawing-master's  daughter,  and  of  her  independent,  awkward 
ways.  Her  progress  in  drawing,  too,  was  counterbalanced  by  her  slowness  in  her 
other  studies;  in  fact  her  new  accomplishment  was  such  a  delight  to  her,  that 
in  her  devotion  to  it  she  became  less  and  less  interested  in  her  books ;  and  as 
for  dress — that  it  should  be  clean  and  suited  both  to  her  means  and  to  the 
work  she  was  doing,  was  all  that  concerned  her,  then  or  since ! 

At  the  end  of  her  first  year  in  school,  Rosa  obtained  her  father's  permission 
to  give  up  her  other  studies  and  to  enter  his  studio  as  pupil  and  assistant.  From 
that  time,  though  as  yet  she  had  not  found  the  reason  of  her  vocation,  yet  her 
true  life  had  begun.  She  worked  diligently  under  the  direction  of  a  master  she 
loved,  and  her  father,  in  his  turn,  delighted  at  the  discovery  of  a  talent  so  long 
hid,  redoubled  his  efforts  to  advance  his  pupil  and  to  make  up  for  lost  time. 

Rosa  worked  for  some  months  at  copying  in  the  Louvre,  but  though  she 
worked  with  such  diligence  and  skill  as  to  win  the  praise  of  the  director,  she 
came,  after  a  time,  to  feel  that  the  mere  copying  of  the  works  of  other  men, 
however  great,  was  not  the  goal  she  was  striving  after ;  so  one  day  she  took  a 
sudden  determination,  left  the  Louvre,  packed  up  her  painting  materials,  and 
started  off  for  one  of  the  rural  suburbs  of  Paris,  where  she  sat  herself  down  to 
sketch  from  nature.  Her  love  of  animals,  hitherto  an  aimless  pleasure,  now  took 
on  a  new  phase  as  she  saw  her  beloved  cows  and  sheep  in  their  place  in  nature, 
giving  life  and  animation  to  the  landscape. 

In  the  winter  season,  when  work  out-of-doors  was  no  longer  pleasant  or  prof- 
itable, Rosa  made  what  use  she  could  of  the  few  opportunities  Paris  had  to  offer 
for  the  study  of  animals.  She  spent  what  time  she  could  spare  from  work  at  the 
horse-market ;  she  visited  the  slaughter-houses,  and  the  suburban  fairs  where 
cattle  and  horses,  sheep  and  pigs  compete  for  prizes,  and  in  these  places  she  filled 
her  portfolios  with  sketches. 

In  1840  she  sent  her  first  picture  to  the  Salon,,  and  as  it  was  accepted  and 
well  received,  she  continued  to  send  her  work  every  year;  but,  up  to  1849,  her 
pictures  were  small,  and  had  little  more  interest  than  belongs  to  simple  studies 
from  nature;  1849  was  a  memorable  year  to  her,  as  it  was  to  France.  In  this 
year  her  father  died  of  cholera,  just  as  he  had  been  appointed  director  of  the 
School  of  Design  for  Young  Girls.     Rosa  was  appointed  to  succeed  him  with  the 


280  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

title  of  Honorary  Directress,  and  her  sister  Juliette  was  made  a  teacher  in  the 
school.  In  the  same  year  she  exhibited  the  picture  that  may  be  said  to  have 
made  her  reputation  with  the  artists  and  amateurs,  as  well  as  with  the  general 
public.  This  was  her  "  Oxen  of  Cantal,"  a  picture  that  combined  with  no  little 
feeling  for  landscape  the  most  admirable  painting  of  cattle  in  repose.  Its  high 
qualities  were  immediately  recognized.  Horace  Vernet,  in  the  name  of  the 
Provisional  Government,  presented  her  with  a  handsome  vase  of  Sevres  porce- 
lain, and  the  gold  medal  for  painting.  In  185 1,  the  jury  selected  for  exhibition 
at  the  World's  Fair  in  London  another  picture  by  Rosa,  "  Ploughing  in  the 
Nivernais,"  which  made  the  artist's  name  known  to  England,  where  the  national 
love  of  animals  secured  for  her  no  end  of  praise  and  of  substantial  reward.  In 
1856  Rosa  painted  her  most  popular  picture,  "The  Horse  Fair,"  now  in  the 
Metropolitan  Museum.  This  painting  went  from  Paris  to  London,  where  it  was 
bought  for  rising  ^1,500,  and  created  such  an  interest  in  the  artist's  personality  as 
would  have  turned  the  head  of  any  ordinary  woman  ;  but  Rosa  Bonheur's  whole 
life  proves  her  no  ordinary  woman. 

For  many  years  Mile.  Bonheur  lived  in  Paris  in  a  house  surrounded  by  a 
large  garden  where  she  kept  a  number  of  animals,  partly  for  the  pleasure  of  their 
companionship,  partly  for  the  opportunity  it  gave  her  of  studying  their  habits,  and 
using  them  as  models.  She  now  resides  in  the  Chateau  By,  near  Fontainebleau, 
where  she  leads  the  same  industrious  life  in  her  advancing  years  that  she  did  in 
the  beginning  of  her  career.  She  rises  early,  and  works  at  her  painting  all  day, 
and  often  spends  the  evening  in  drawing ;  for  she  takes  but  little  interest  in  what 
is  called  society,  and  cares  only  for  the  companionship  of  her  intimate  friends, 
which  she  can  enjoy  without  disarranging  her  life,  or  neglecting  the  studies  she 
loves.  She  dresses  with  great  simplicity  at  all  times,  and  even  when  she  accepts 
invitations,  makes  no  concessions  to  the  caprices  of  fashion.  In  her  student- 
days,  when  visiting  the  abattoirs,  markets,  and  fairs,  she  accustomed  herself  to 
wear  such  a  modification  of  man's  dress  as  would  permit  her  to  move  about 
among  rough  men  without  compromising  her  sex.  But,  beside  that  her  dignity 
was  always  safe  in  her  own  keeping,  she  bears  testimony  to  the  good  manners 
and  the  good  dispositions  of  the  men  she  came  in  contact  with.  Rosa  Bonheur 
has  always  been  an  honor  to  art  and  an  honor  to  her  sex.  At  seventy-two  she 
finds  herself  in  the  enjoyment  of  many  things  that  go  to  make  a  happy  life.  She 
has  a  well-earned  fame  as  an  artist ;  an  abundant  fortune  gained  by  her  own  in- 
dustry and  used  as  honorably  as  it  has  been  gained ;  and  she  has  troops  of  friends 
drawn  to  her  by  her  solid  worth  of .  character. 

Of  the  great  number  of  pictures  Rosa  Bonheur  has  painted,  by  far  the  most 
are  of  subjects  found  in  France,  but  a  few  of  the  best  were  painted  in  Scotland. 
She  has  received  many  public  honors  in  medals  and  decorations.  In  1856,  after 
painting  the  "  Horse  Fair,"  the  Empress  Eugenie  visited  her  at  her  studio  and 
bestowed  upon  her  the  Cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  fastening  the  decoration 
to  the  artist's  dress  with  her  own  hands.  When  the  invading  army  of  Prussia 
reached   Paris,  the  Crown   Prince  gave  orders  that  the  studio  of  Rosa  Bonheur 


GEROME 


281 


should  be  respected.  But  though  she,  no  doubt,  holds  all  these  honors  at  their 
worth,  yet  she  holds  still  more  dear  the  art  to  which  she  owes,  not  only  these, 
but  all  that  has  made  her  life  a  treasury  of  happy  remembrances. 


(^^^^-a-^c 


r 


I 


gerOme  * 

By  Clarence  Cook 

(born   1824) 

N  the  Paris  Salon  of  1847,  a  small  picture  appeared, 
representing  a  Greek  boy  and  girl  stirring  up  two 


srame-cocks  to  fia:ht.     Althouorh  it 


was 


the  work  of  an 


unknown  painter,  and  had  to  contend  with  an  unusually 
brilliant  display  of  pictures,  many  of  them  by  men  al- 
ready famous,  yet  it  strongly  attracted  the  general  pub- 
lic, partly  by  the  novelty  of  the  subject,  and  partly  by 
the  careful  and  finished  manner  of  the  painting.  It  de- 
lighted the  critics  as  well,  and  one  of  the  most  distin- 
guished of  them,  Theophile  Gautier,  wrote  :  "  A  new 
Greek  is  born  to  us,  and  his  name  is  G^rome  !  " 

This  picture,  which  was  to  pjove  the  first  leaf  in  a  laurel-crown  to  be  awarded 
the  painter  in  his  lifetime,  and  not,  as  is  so  often  the  case,  by  the  tardy  hand  of 
Death,  was  the  work  of  Jean-Leon  G^rome,  a  young  man  of  twenty-three.  He 
had  been  for  six  years  under  the  teaching  of  Paul  Delaroche,  part  of  the  time  in 
Italy,  but  most  of  it  in  Paris.  He  was  born  at  Vesoul,  a  small,  dull  town  in  the 
Department  of  Haute-Saone,  in  1824.  His  father  was  a  goldsmith,  who,  like 
most  French  fathers  in  his  rank  of  life,  had  hoped  to  bring  up  his  son  to  succeed 
him  in  his  business.  The  boy  did  for  a  time,  we  believe,  work  in  his  father's 
shop,  but  he  had  a  stronger  natural  bent  for  painting  ;  something  perhaps  in 
the  occupation  fostered,  or  even  created,  this  taste — for  not  a  few  distinguished 
painters  have  been  apprenticed  to  the  goldsmith's  trade — and  his  father,  like  a 
wise  man,  instead  of  opposing  his  son's  wishes,  did  what  he  could  to  further 
them.  He  bought  him  painting-materials  ;  and  instead  of  sending  him  to  a 
"  school  of  design,"  or  putting  him  under  the  tutelage  of  some  third-rate  drawing- 
master,  such  as  is  commonly  found  in  country  towns,  he  bought  him  a  picture  by 
Decamps,  an  artist  since  become  famous,  but  then  just  in  the  dawn  of  his  fame, 
and  put  it  before  his  son  as  a  model.  Young  G^rdme  made  a  copy  of  this  pict- 
ure, and  an  artist  from  Paris,  who  happened  to  be  passing  through  Vesoul,  saw 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


282  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

it,  and  discerning  the  boy's  talent,  gave  him  a  letter  to  Paul  Delaroche,  encour- 
aging him  to  go  to  Paris  and  there  to  take  up  the  study  of  art  as  a  profession. 
At  seventeen  years  of  age,  with  his  father's  consent  and  $250  in  his  pocket, 
Gdrome  went  up  to  Paris,  and  presenting  his  letter  to  Delaroche,  was  well  re- 
ceived by  him,  and  entered  the  School  of  Fine  Arts  (Ecole  des  Beaux-Arts)  as 
his  pupil. 

He  had  been  with  Delaroche  three  years  and  had  proved  himself  one  of  the 
most  loyal  and  diligent  of  his  pupils,  when  an  event  occurred,  insignificant  in  it- 
self, but  which  was  to  have  an  important  influence  upon  his  life  and  give  a  new 
direction  to  his  talent. 

French  studios  are  not  as  a  rule  very  orderly  places.  The  young  men  who 
frequent  them  are  left  pretty  much  to  themselves,  with  no  one  to  govern  them 
or  to  oversee  them.  The  artist  they  are  studying  under  makes,  at  the  most,  a 
brief  daily  visit,  going  the  round  of  the  easels,  saying  a  word  or  two  to  each  pu- 
pil, although  it  often  happens  that  he  says  nothing,  and  then  departs  for  his  prop- 
er work,  leaving  his  pupils  to  their  own  devices.  The  students  are  for  the  most 
part  like  young  men  everywhere,  a  turbulent  set,  full  of  animal  spirits,  which 
sometimes  carry  them  beyond  reasonable  bounds.  It  was  a  boisterous  outbreak 
of  this  sort,  but  far  wilder  than  common,  that  occurred  in  the  studio  of  Delaroche, 
and  which  brought  about  the  crisis  in  Gerome's  life  to  which  we  have  alluded. 
Fortunatelv  for  him,  the  incident  took  place  while  G^rome  was  on  a  visit  tc  his 
parents  at  Vesoul,  so  that  he  was  in  no  way  implicated  in  the  affair.  He  came 
back  to  find  the  studio  closed  ;  Delaroche,  deeply  disturbed,  had  dismissed  all 
his  pupils  and  announced  his  intention  to  visit  Italy.  His  studio  was  to  be  taken 
during  his  absence,  by  Gleyre,  and  he  advised  those  of  his  pupils  in  whom  he  took 
a  personal  interest,  to  continue  their  studies  under  his  successor.  G^rdme  was 
one  of  those  to  whom  he  gave  this  advice,  but  Gerome  was  too  much  attached 
to  his  master  to  leave  him  for  another,  and  bluntly  announced  his  purpose  of  fol- 
lowing him  to  Rome.  A  few  of  the  other  pupils  of  Delaroche  were  of  the  same 
mind,  and  they  all  set  out  for  Italy  together.  Arrived  in  Rome,  Gerome,  always 
a  hard  worker,  threw  himself  energetically  into  his  studies  ;  drawing  the  ancient 
buildings,  the  Capitol,  the  Colosseum  ;  sketching  in  the  Forum  and  on  the  Cam- 
pagna  ;  copying  the  pictures  and  the  statues,  saturating  his  mind  in  the  spirit  of 
antique  art,  and  schooling  his  hand  in  its  forms,  until  he  had  laid  up  a  rich  store 
of  material  for  use  in  future  pictures.  On  his  return  to  Paris  he  worked  for  a 
while  in  Gleyre's  studio,  but  when  Delaroche  came  back  from  Italy,  Gerome 
again  joined  him  and  renewed  his  old  relation  as  pupil  and  assistant — working, 
among  other  tasks,  on  the  painting  of  "  Charlemagne  Crossing  the  Alps,"  a  com- 
mission given  to  Delaroche  by  the  Government,  for  the  Grande  Gaicric  des  Ba- 
tailles  at  Versailles  :  a  vast  apartment  lined  with  pictures  of  all  the  victories  of 
the  French  from  Soissons  to  Solferino. 

Such  work  as  this,  however,  had  little  interest  for  Gerome.  His  mind  at  this 
time  was  full  of  the  Greeks  and  Romans ;  his  enthusiasm  for  Napoleon,  which 
later  was  to  give  birth  to  so  many  pictures,  had  not  yet  awakened  ;  nor  did  he 


G^ROME  283 

care  for  the  subjects  from  the  histories  of  France  and  England  in  the  sixteenth 
and  seventeenth  centuries,  that  had  provided  his  master,  Delaroche,  with  so  many 
tragic  themes  for  his  pencil  :  "  The  Death  of  the  Duke  of  Guise,"  "  The  Children 
of  Edward,"  the  "  Death  of  Queen  Elizabeth,"  "The  Execution  of  Lady  Jane 
Grey,"  "  Cromwell  at  the  Coffin  of  Charles  I.,"  and  others  of  the  same  strain. 

Gerome's  visit  to  Italy  had  awakened  in  him  a  strong  interest  in  the  life  of 
the  antique  world,  and  this  would  naturally  be  strengthened  by  all  that  he  would 
hear  and  see  of  the  growing  interest  of  the  public  in  the  same  subject  :  an  inter- 
est kindled  by  the  discoveries  of  archaeologists  in  classic  soil  :  in  Greece  and 
Italy,  in  Assyria  and  Egypt.  These  discoveries  had  filled  the  museums  and  the 
cabinets  of  private  collectors  with  beautiful  and  interesting  fragments  illustrating 
the  external  life  of  the  past,  and  illuminating  its  poetry  ;  and  it  is  no  wonder  that 
some  of  the  younger  artists  rejoiced  in  the  new  world  of  anecdote  and  story  that 
opened  so  richly  before  them. 

However  it  came  about — whether  his  own  interest  in  the  antique  life  commu- 
nicated itself  to  his  fellows,  or  whether  they,  all  together,  simply  shared  in  the  in- 
terest taken  in  the  subject  by  the  world  about  them — G^rome  and  some  of  his 
companions  in  Delaroche's  studio  showed  such  a  predilection  for  classic  themes, 
that  they  were  nicknamed  by  the  critics  "  The  New  Greeks."  Among  Gerome's 
fellow-pupils  were  two  young  men,  Hamon  and  Aubert,  who  later  gained  no 
small  applause  by  their  playful  and  familiar  way  of  treating  classic  themes.  They 
are  well  known  to  us  by  engravings  from  their  pictures,  which  are  in  all  our  shops. 
Hamon's  "  My  Sister  is  not  at  home,"  and  Aubert's  various  pretty  fancies  of 
nymphs  and  cupids,  while  they  are  not  great  works  of  art,  are  reasonably  sure  of 
a  long  life,  due  to  their  innocent  freshness  and  simplicity. 

Delaroche's  pupils  were  working  all  together  in  friendly  competition  for  the 
grand  Roman  prize  which  was  to  give  the  fortunate  one  the  right  to  four  years' 
study  in  Rome  at  the  expense  of  the  state.  Gerome's  studio  was  shared  by  his 
friends  Picou  and  Hamon.  Hamon,  writing  in  later  years  about  his  youthful 
days,  says  :  "  Companions  and  rivals  at  the  same  time,  we  were  all  working  to- 
gether for  the  Grand  Prix  de  Rome.  Gerome  inspired  us  all  with  the  love  of 
hard  work,  and  of  hard  work  to  the  accompaniment  of  singing  and  laughing." 

But  in  the  intervals  of  his  hard  work  for  the  prize,  G(!r6me  was  also  working 
on  a  picture  which  he  hoped  to  have  accepted  for  the  Salon.  This  was  the  pict- 
ure we  spoke  of  in  the  beginning  of  this  notice  :  "Two  Voung  Greeks  stirring- 
up  Game-cocks  to  fight."  When  it  was  finished  Gerome  showed  it  to  his  mas- 
ter with  many  misgivings  ;  but  Delaroche  encouraged  him  to  send  it  to  the  Salon. 
It  was  accepted,  and  as  we  have  seen,  won  for  Gerome  a  great  success  with  the 
public.  The  next  year,  1848,  he  again  exhibited,  but  the  impression  he  made 
was  less  marked  than  on  the  first  occasion.  His  former  picture  had  a  subject 
such  as  it  was,  of  his  own  devising.  The  "  Cock-fight  "  was  not  an  illustration 
of  any  passage  in  Greek  poetry,  and  in  spite  of  its  antique  setting,  it  had  a  mod- 
ern air,  and  to  this,  no  doubt,  its  popularity  was  largely  due.  But  in  1848  he 
essayed  an  illustration  of  the  Greek  poet,  Anacreon,  translating  into  picture  the 


284  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

poem  that  tells  how,  one  winter  ev^ening,  sitting  by  his  fire,  the  old  poet  was  sur- 
prised by  a  sound  of  weeping  outside  his  door,  and  opening  it,  found  Cupid  wet 
and  shivering  and  begging  for  a  shelter  from  the  cold.  The  man  takes  the 
pretty,  dimpled  mischief  to  his  bosom,  warms  his  feet  and  hands  at  the  fire,  dries 
his  bow  and  arrows,  and  lets  him  sip  wine  from  his  cup.  Then,  when  Cupid  is 
refreshed  and  warmed,  he  tries  his  arrows,  now  here,  now  there,  and  at  last  aims 
one  straight  at  his  benefactor's  heart,  and  laughing  at  the  jest,  flics  out  at  the 
open  door.  G^rome's  picture  was  in  three  panels.  The  first  showed  the  poet 
opening  the  door  to  the  sobbing  Cupid,  with  his  bedraggled  wings  and  dripping 
curls ;  in  the  next,  the  rosy  ingrate  wounds  his  benefactor ;  in  the  third,  the  poet 
sits  disconsolate  by  his  hearth,  musing  over  the  days  when  Love  was  his  guest,  if 
but  for  an  hour.  As  the  story  was  an  old  one,  so  many  an  artist  before  Chrome 
had  played  with  it  as  a  subject  for  a  picture.  Jean-Frangois  Millet  himself,  an- 
other pupil  of  Delaroche,  though  earlier  than  G^rome,  had  tried  his  hand  at  illus- 
trating Anacreon's  fable  before  he  found  his  proper  field  of  work  in  portraying  the 
occupations  of  the  men  and  women  about  him,  the  peasants  among  whom  he  was 
born  and  bred. 

G^rome's  picture  did  nothing  to  advance  his  fortunes  with  the  public.  1848 
was  a  stormy  time  in  France  and  in  all  Europe,  and  people  were  not  in  the  mood 
to  be  amused  with  such  trifles  as  Anacreon  and  his  Cupid.  The  pictures  in  that 
year's  Salon  that  drew  the  public  in  crowds  about  them  were  Couture's  "The 
Romans  of  the  Decline  of  the  Empire,"  in  which  all  Paris  saw,  or  thought  it  saw, 
the  handwriting-on-the-wall  for  the  government  of  Louis-Philippe  ;  and  the 
"  Shipwrecked  Sailors  in  a  Bark,"  of  Delacroix,  a  wild  and  stormy  scene  of  ter- 
ror that  seemed  to  echo  the  prophecies  of  evil  days  at  hand  for  France  with 
which  the  time  was  rife. 

Gerome's  next  picture,  however,  was  to  bring  him  once  more  before  the  pub- 
lic, and  to  carry  his  name  beyond  his  native  France  even  as  far  as  America. 
Leaving  for  the  nonce  his  chosen  field  of  antiquity,  where  yet  he  was  to  distin- 
guish himself,  he  looked  for  a  subject  in  the  Paris  of  his  own  day.  "  The  Duel 
after  the  Masquerade  "  opens  for  us  a  corner  of  the  Bois  de  Boulogne — the 
fashionable  park  on  the  outskirts  of  Paris — where  in  the  still  dawn  of  a  winter's 
day,  a  group  of  men  are  met  to  witness  a  duel  between  two  of  their  companions 
who  have  quarrelled  at  a  masked  ball.  The  ground  is  covered  with  a  light  fall  of 
snow  ;  the  bare  branches  of  the  trees  weave  their  network  across  the  gray  sky, 
and  in  the  distance  we  see  the  carriages  that  have  brought  the  disputants  to  the 
field.  The  duel  is  over.  One  of  the  men,  dressed  in  the  costume  of  Pierrot, 
the  loose  white  trousers  and  slippers,  the  baggy  white  shirt,  and  white  skull-cap, 
falls,  mortally  wounded,  into  the  arms  of  his  second  :  the  pallor  of  coming  death 
masked  by  the  white-painted  face.  The  other  combatant,  a  Mohawk  Indian 
(once  a  staple  character  at  every  masked-ball  in  Paris  :  curious  survival  of  the 
popularity  of  Cooper's  novels),  is  led  wounded  off  the  field  by  a  friend  dressed 
as  Harlequin.  Ger6me  in  this  striking  picture  showed  for  the  first  time  that  tal- 
ent as  a  story-teller  to  which  he  is  so  largely  indebted  for  his  reputation.     What- 


GfiROME  285 

ever  his  subject  may  be,  it  is  always  set  forth  in  the  clearest  manner,  so  that  every- 
one may  understand  the  story  without  the  need  of  an  interpreter. 

Leaving  out  of  view  the  few  pictures  he  painted  illustrating  passages  in  Na- 
poleon's career,  it  may  be  said  that  Gerdme's  taste  led  him  away  from  scenes  of 
modern  life  ;  for  even  his  many  oriental  subjects  so  relate  to  forms  of  life  belong- 
ing in  reality  to  the  past,  that  they  make  no  exception  to  the  statement.  He  did 
not  therefore  follow  up  "The  Duel  "  with  other  comments  on  the  follies  of  mod- 
ern society — for  in  the  temper  of  that  time  this  picture,  like  Couture's  "Roman 
Orgie  "  and  Millet's  "  Man  with  the  Hoe,"  was  looked  upon  as  a  satire  and  a 
warning,  and  owed  its  popularity  as  much  to  this  conviction  on  the  part  of  the 
public  as  to  its  pictorial  merits — but  returned  to  antique  times,  and  showed  in  his 
treatment  of  themes  from  that  source  an  equal,  if  not  a  greater  power  to  interest 
the  public. 

Gerome's  two  pictures,  the  "  Ave  Caesar !  Morituri  te  Salutant,"  "  Hail, 
Caesar!  Those  about  to  die,  salute  Thee,"  and  "The  Gladiators,"  are  so  univer- 
sally known  as  to  need  no  description.  Whatever  criticism  may  be  made  upon 
them,  they  will  always  remain  interesting  to  the  world  at  large  ;  from  their  sub- 
ject, from  the  way  in  which  the  discoveries  of  archaeology  are  made  familiar,  and, 
not  least,  from  the  impression  they  make  of  the  artist's  own  strong  interest  in 
what  he  had  to  say.  In  both  pictures  he  succeeded  in  showing  the  Colosseum 
as  no  longer  a  ruin,  but  as,  so  to  speak,  a  living  place  peopled  by  the  swarm  of 
the  Roman  populace,  with  the  emperor  and  his  court,  and  the  College  of  the  Ves- 
tal Virgins,  and,  for  chief  actors,  the  hapless  wretches  who  are  "  butchered  to 
make  a  Roman  holiday."  Another  picture  that  greatly  increased  Gerome's  repu- 
tation, was  his  "  Death  of  Julius  Caesar,"  though  it  must  be  confessed  there  was 
a  touch  of  the  stage  in  the  arrangement  of  the  scene,  and  in  the  action  of  the 
body  of  senators  and  conspirators  leaving  the  hall  with  brandished  swords  and  as 
if  singing  in  chorus,  that  was  absent  from  the  pictures  of  the  amphitheatre. 
There  was  also  less  material  for  the  curiosity  of  the  lovers  of  archaeology  ;  no 
such  striking  point,  for  instance,  as  the  reproduction  of  the  gladiators'  helmets 
and  armor  recently  discovered  in  Herculaneum  ;  but  the  body  of  the  dead  Caesar 
lying  "  even  at  the  base  of  Pompey's  statue  "  with  his  face  muffled  in  his  toga, 
was  a  masterly  performance  ;  some  critic,  moved  by  the  grandeur  of  the  lines,  said 
it  was  not  a  mere  piece  of  foreshortening,  it  was  "  a  perspective."  Gerome  made 
a  life-size  painting  of  the  Caesar  in  this  picture.  It  is  in  the  Corcoran  Gallery  at 
Washington. 

Gerome  painted  several  other  pictures  from  classic  subjects,  but  none  of  them 
had  the  interest  for  the  general  public  of  those  we  have  described.  In  1854  he 
exhibited  a  huge  canvas,  called  "The  Age  of  Augustus,"  a  picture  suggested, 
perhaps,  by  the  "  Hemicycle  "  of  his  master  Delaroche,  on  which  he  himself  had 
painted.  It  represented  heroes,  poets,  sages,  of  the  Augustan  age,  grouped 
about  the  cradle  of  the  infant  Christ  ;  it  procured  for  Gerome  the  red  ribbon  of 
the  Legion  of  Honor,  and  is  now,  as  the  artist  himself  jestingly  says,  "the 
'greatest '  picture  in  the  Museum  of  Amiens."     In  the  same  year  G6r6me  went 


286  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

to  Egypt  for  the  first  time  ;  since  then  he  has  more  than  once  visited  it,  but  it  is 
doubtful  if  he  could  renew  the  pleasure  of  his  youthful  experience.  "  I  set  out," 
he  says,  "  with  my  friends,  I  the  fifth,  all  of  us  lightly  furnished  with  money,  but 
full  of  youthful  enthusiasm.  Life  was  then  easy  in  Egypt  ;  we  lived  at  a  very 
moderate  rate  ;  we  hired  a  boat  and  lived  four  months  upon  the  Nile,  hunting, 
painting,  fishing  by  turns,  from  Damietta  to  Philae.  We  returned  to  Cairo  and 
remained  there  four  months  longer  in  a  house  in  the  older  part  of  the  town,  be- 
longing to  Soleman  Pasha.  As  Frenchmen,  he  treated  us  with  cordial  hospital- 
ity. Happy  period  of  youth,  of  freedom  from  care  !  Hope  and  the  future 
opened  bright  before  us  ;  the  sky  was  blue  !  " 

G^rome's  pictures  of  Eastern  life  make  a  gallery  by  themselves.  A  few  of 
them  are  historic,  such  as  his  "  Cleopatra  visiting  Cresar,"  but  the  most  of  them 
are  simply  scenes  and  incidents  drawn  from  the  daily  life  of  the  modern  inhabi- 
tants of  Cairo  and  the  desert,  illustrating  their  manners  and  customs.  The  mere 
titles  would  fill  up  a  large  part  of  our  space.  Many  of  the  best  of  them  are 
owned  in  this  country,  and  all  have  been  reproduced  by  engraving  or  by  photog- 
raphy. 

In  another  field  G^rome  won  great  distinction,  painting  scenes  from  the  his- 
tory of  France  in  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  ;  subjects  drawn  from  what  may  be 
called  the  high  comedy  of  court-life,  and  treated  by  G^rorae  with  remarkable  re- 
finement and  distinction.  Among  these  pictures  the  best  known  are:  "Moliere 
Breakfasting  with  Louis  XIV.,"  illustrating  the  story  of  the  king's  rebuke  to  his 
courtiers  who  affected  to  despise  the  man  of  genius;  "  Pere  Joseph,"  the  priest 
who  under  the  guise  of  humility  and  self-abnegation  reduces  the  greatest  nobles 
to  the  state  of  lackeys  ;  "  Louis  XIV.  Receiving  the  Great  Conde,"  and  "Collab- 
oration," two  poets  of  Louis  XI  V.'s  time  working  together  over  a  play.  Among 
his  accomplishments  as  an  artist  we  must  not  forget  the  talent  that  Gerome  has 
shown  as  a  sculptor.  He  has  modelled  several  figures  from  his  own  pictures,  with 
such  admirable  skill  as  to  prove  that  he  might  easily  have  made  sculpture  a  pro- 
fession had  he  not  chosen  to  devote  himself  to  painting. 


c^^^V:^ 


r 


DANTE    GABRIEL   ROSSETTI 


287 


DANTE  GABRIEL  ROSSETTI 


* 


By  Edmund  Gosse 


(1828-1882) 


T" 


»HOSE  whose  privilege  it  was  to 
meet  the  late  Mr.  Gabriel 
Rossetti,  at  once  in  the  pleni- 
tude of  his  powers  and  in  the 
freshness  of  their  own  impres- 
sions, will  not  expect  to  be 
moved  again  through  life  by  so 
magnetic  a  presence.  In  his 
dealings  with  those  much  young- 
er than  himself,  his  tact  and  in- 
fluence were  unequalled  ;  he  re- 
ceived a  shy  but  ardent  youth 
with  such  a  noble  courtesy,  with 
so  much  sympathy  yet  with  no 
condescension,  with  so  grand  an 
air  and  yet  so  warm  a  welcome, 
that  his  new  acquaintance  was 
enslaved  at  the  first  sentence. 
This  seems  to  me  to  have  been 
in  a  certain  sense  the  key-note  of 
the  man.  He  was  essentially  a 
point  of  fire  ;  not  a  peripatetic  in 
any  sense,  not  a  person  of  wide 
circumference,  but  a  nucleus  of  pure  imagination  that  never  stirred  or  shifted, 
but  scintillated  in  all  directions.  The  function  of  Gabriel  Rossetti,  or  at  least 
his  most  obvious  function,  was  to  sit  in  isolation,  and  to  have  vaguely  glimmer- 
ing spirits  presented  to  him  for  complete  illumination.  He  was  the  most 
prompt  in  suggestion,  the  most  regal  in  giving,  the  most  sympathetic  in  response, 
of  the  men  I  have  known  or  seen  ;  and  this  without  a  single  touch  of  the  pro- 
phetic manner,  the  air  of  such  professional  seers  as  Coleridge  or  Carlyle.  What 
lie  had  to  give  was  not  mystical  or  abstract ;  it  was  purely  concrete.  His  mind 
was  full  of  practical  artistic  schemes,  only  a  few  of  which  were  suited  to  his  own 
practice  in  painting  or  poetry  ;  the  rest  were  at  the  service  of  whoever  would 
come  in  a  friendly  spirit  and  take  them.  I  find  among  his  letters  to  me,  which 
I  have  just  been  reading  once  again,  a  paper  of  delightful  suggestions  about  the 
cover  of  a  book  of  verse  ;  the  next  youth  who  waited  upon  him  would  perhaps 
be  a  painter,  and  would  find  that  the  great  genius  and  master  did  not  disdain  the 

*  Copyright,  1894,  by  Sclmar  Hess. 


288  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

discussion  of  picture-frames.  This  was  but  tlie  undercurrent  of  liis  influence  ; 
as  we  shall  see  more  and  more  every  year  as  the  central  decades  of  this  century 
become  history,  its  main  stream  directed  the  two  great  arts  of  painting  and 
poetry  into  new  channels,  and  set  a  score  of  diverse  talents  in  motion. 

But,  as  far  as  anything  can  be  seen  plainly  about  Rossetti  at  present,  to  me 
the  fact  of  his  immovability,  his  self-support,  his  curious  reserve,  seems  to  be  the 
most  interesting.  He  held  in  all  things  to  the  essential  and  not  to  the  acci- 
dental ;  he  preferred  the  dry  grain  of  musk  to  a  diluted  flood  of  perfume.  An 
Italian  by  birth  and  deeply  moved  by  all  things  Italian,  he  never  visited  Italy  ;  a 
lover  of  ritual  and  a  sympathizer  with  all  the  mysteries  of  the  Roman  creed,  he 
never  joined  the  Catholic  Church  ;  a  poet  whose  form  and  substance  alike  influ- 
enced almost  all  the  men  of  his  generation,  he  was  more  than  forty  years  of  age 
before  he  gave  his  verse  to  the  public  ;  a  painter  who  considered  the  attitude  of 
the  past  with  more  ardor  and  faith  than  almost  any  artist  of  his  time,  he  never 
chose  to  visit  the  churches  or  galleries  of  Europe.  It  has  been  said,  among  the 
many  absurd  things  which  his  death  has  provoked,  that  he  shrank  from  publicity 
from  timidity,  or  spurned  it  from  ill-temper.  One  brilliant  journalist  has  de- 
scribed him  as  sulking  like  Hector  in  his  tent.  It  used  to  be  Achilles  who 
sulked  when  I  was  at  school ;  but  it  certainly  never  was  Gabriel  Rossetti.  Those 
who  only  knew  him,  after  his  constitution  had  passed  under  the  yoke  of  the  drug 
which  killed  him,  cannot  judge  of  his  natural  reserve  from  that  artificial  and  mor- 
bid reserve  which  embittered  the  last  years  of  his  life.  The  former  was  not  con- 
nected with  any  objection  to  new  faces  or  dislike  of  cordial  society,  but  with  the 
indomitable  characteristic  of  the  man,  which  made  him  give  out  the  treasures  of 
the  spirit,  and  never  need  to  receive  them.  So  far  from  disliking  society,  it  is 
my  impression  that  he  craved  it  as  a  necessity,  although  he  chose  to  select  its 
constituents  and  narrow  its  range. 

He  was  born  in  1828.  The  story  of  his  parentage  is  well  known,  and  has 
been  told  in  full  detail  since  his  death.  He  was  born  in  London  and  christened 
Gabriel  Charles  Rossetti ;  it  was  not,  I  am  told,  until  he  was  of  age  to  appreci- 
ate the  value  of  the  name  that  he  took  upon  himself  the  cognomen  which  his 
father  had  borne,  the  Dante  by  which  the  world,  though  not  his  friends,  have 
known  him.  Living  with  his  father  in  Charlotte  street,  with  two  sisters  and  a 
brother  no  less  ardently  trained  in  letters  than  himself,  he  seems  to  have  been 
turned  to  poetry,  as  he  was  afterward  sustained  in  it,  by  the  interior  flame.  The 
household  has  been  described  to  me  by  one  who  saw  it  in  1847  •  the  father,  titu- 
lar professor  of  Italian  literature,  but  with  no  professional  duties,  seated  the  live- 
long day,  with  a  shade  over  his  eyes,  writing  devotional  or  patriotic  poetry  in 
his  native  tongue  ;  the  girls  reading  Dante  aloud  with  their  rich  maiden  voices  ; 
Gabriel  buried  here  in  his  writing,  or  darting  round  the  corner  of  the  street  to 
the  studio  where  he  painted.  From  this  seclusion  he  wrote  to  the  friend  who 
has  kindly  helped  me  in  preparing  these  notes,  and  whose  memories  of  the  poet 
extend  over  a  longer  period  than  those  of  any  survivor  not  related  to  him. 

Mr.  W.  B.   Scott,  now  so  well  known  in  more  arts  than  one,  had  then  but 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI  289 

just  published  his  first  bool:,  his  mystical  and  transcendental  poem  of  "  The 
Year  of  the  World."  This  seems  to  have  fallen  under  Rossetti's  notice,  for  on 
November  25,  1847,  he  wrote  to  the  author,  a  perfect  stranger  to  himself,  a  letter 
of  warm  sympathy  and  acknowledgment.  Mr.  Scott  was  living  in  Newcastle, 
and,  instead  of  meeting,  the  young  poets  at  first  made  acquaintance  with  each 
other  by  correspondence.  Rossetti  soon  mentioned,  of  course,  his  own  schemes 
and  ambitions,  and  he  sent,  as  a  sample  of  his  powers,  his  poems  of  "  The 
Blessed  Damozel,"  and  "  My  Sister's  Sleep,"  which  he  had  written  about  eigh- 
teen months  hciore. 

Mr.  Scott  tells  me  that  his  first  feeling  on  receiving  these  poems,  written  in 
English  by  an  Italian  boy  of  eighteen,  was  one  of  amazement.  I  cannot  wonder 
at  it.  If  the  "  Blessed  Damozel,"  when  it  was  published  a  quarter  of  a  century 
later,  seemed  a  masterpiece  to  those  who  had,  in  the  meanwhile,  read  so  much 
that  was  vaguely  inspired  by  it,  what  must  it  have  been  in  1846  ?  Certain  pieces 
in  Tennyson's  "  Poems,"  of  1842,  and  a  few  fragments  of  Browning's  "  Bells  and 
Pomegranates  "  were  the  only  English  poems  which  can  be  supposed  to  have 
given  it  birth,  ev^en  indirectly.  In  its  interpretation  of  mystical  thoughts  by  con- 
crete images,  in  its  medieval  fervor  and  consistence  of  fancy,  in  its  peculiar  met- 
rical facility,  it  was  distinctly  new — original  as  few  poems  except  those  by  the 
acknowledged  masters  of  the  craft  can  ever  be. 

"  The  sun  was  gone  now  ;  the  curled  moon 

Was  Hke  a  little  feather 
Fluttering  far  down  the  gulf  ;  and  now 

She  spoke  through  the  clear  weather. 
Her  voice  was  like  the  voice  the  stars 

Had  when  they  sang  together." 

This  was  a  strange  accent  in  1846.  Miss  Barrett  and  Mr.  Tennyson  were 
then  the  most  accepted  poets.  Mr.  Browning  spoke  fluently  and  persistently, 
but  only  to  a  very  little  circle  ;  Mr.  Home's  "  Orion  "'  and  Mr.  Bailey's  "  Festus" 
were  the  recent  outcomes  of  Keats  and  Goethe  ;  the  Spasmodic  School,  to  be 
presently  born  of  much  unwise  study  of  "  Festus,"  was  still  unknown ;  Mr. 
Clough,  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  and  Mr.  Patmore  were  quite  unapparent,  taking 
form  and  voice  in  solitude  ;  and  here  was  a  new  singer,  utterly  unlike  them  all, 
pouring  out  his  first  notes  with  the  precision  and  independence  of  the  new- 
fledged  thrush  in  the  woodland  chorus. 

In  painting,  the  process  was  somewhat  different.  In  this  art,  no  less  than  in 
poetry,  Rossetti  understood  at  once  what  it  was  that  he  wished  to  do  himself, 
and  what  he  desired  to  see  others  doing  ;  but  the  difficulties  of  technique  were  in 
his  way.  He  had  begun  to  write  in  childhood,  but  he  had  taken  up  design  late 
in  his  youth,  and  he  had  undergone  no  discipline  in  it.  At  the  present  day, 
when  every  student  has  to  pass  a  somewhat  stringent  examination  in  design, 
Rossetti,  at  eighteen,  could  not  have  entered  the  schools  of  the  Royal  Academy. 
He  did  so,  however,  yet  without  ever  advancing  to  the  Life  School.     The  soul  of 

19 


290  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

art,  at  this  early  period,  interested  him  far  more  than  the  body,  especially  such  a 
substance  as  he  found  under  the  presidency  of  Sir  Martin  Shee  and  the  keeper- 
ship  of  George  Jones.  Let  us  not  forget,  meanwhile,  that  it  is  easy  to  sneer  at 
the  incompetence  of  mannered  old  artists,  and  yet  Lard  to  over-estimate  the  value 
of  discipline  in  a  school,  however  conventional.  Rossetti  was  too  impatient  to 
learn  to  draw,  and  this  he  lived  to  regret.  His  immediate  associates,  the  young 
men  whom  he  began  to  lead  and  impress,  were  better  draughtsmen  than  he. 
His  first  oil  picture,  I  believe,  was  a  portrait  of  his  father,  now  in  possession  of 
the  familv.  But,  as  far  as  can  be  now  made  out,  he  did  not  begin  to  paint  seri- 
ously till  about  January,  1848,  when  he  persuaded  another  Royal  Academy  stu- 
dent, W.  Holman  Hunt,  to  take  a  large  room  close  to  the  paternal  house  in 
Charlotte  street,  and  make  it  their  studio.  Here  Mr.  Scott  visited  them  in  the 
early  spring  of  that  year  ;  he  describes  to  me  the  large  pictures  they  were  strug- 
gling upon.  Hunt,  on  his  "Oath  of  Rienzi,"  and  Rossetti,  on  his  "Girlhood  of 
Ma;y  Virgin."  The  latter  was  evidently  at  present  but  poorly  equipped  ;  the 
painting  was  timid  and  boyish,  pale  in  tone,  and  with  no  hint  or  promise  of  that 
radiant  color  which  afterward  became  Rossetti's  main  characteristic.  But  the 
feeling  was  identical  with  that  in  his  far  more  accomplished  early  poems.  The 
very  pulse  and  throb  of  media:;val  adoration  pervaded  the  whole  conception  of 
the  picture,  and  Mr.  Scott's  first  impression  was  that,  in  this  marvellous  poet  and 
possible  painter,  the  new  Tractarian  movement  had  found  its  expositor  in  art. 
Yet  this  surely  was  no  such  feeble  or  sentimental  echo  as  had  inspired  the  de- 
clared Tractarian  poets  of  eight  or  nine  years  earlier ;  there  was  nothing  here 
that  recalled  such  a  book  as  the  "  Cherwell  Water  Lily  "  of  Father  Faber.  This 
contained  the  genuine  fleshly  mysticism,  bodily  presentment  of  a  spiritual  idea, 
and  intimate  knowledge  of  medieeval  sentiment  without  which  the  new  religious 
fervor  had  no  intellectual  basis.  This  strong  instinct  for  the  forms  of  the  Catho- 
lic religion,  combined  with  no  attendance  on  the  rites  of  that  church,  fostered  bv 
no  study  of  ecclesiastical  literature  or  association  with  teachers  or  proselytes,  but 
original  to  himself  and  self-supported,  was  at  that  time  without  doubt  the  feature 
in  Rossetti's  intellectual  character  which  demands  our  closest  attention.  Nor  do 
I  believe  that  this  passion  for  the  physical  presentation  of  a  mystical  idea  was 
ever  entirely  supplanted  by  those  other  views  of  life  and  art  which  came  to  oc- 
cupy his  maturer  mind.  In  his  latest  poems — in  "Rose  Mary,"  for  instance — I 
see  this  first  impulse  returning  upon  him  with  more  than  its  early  fascination. 
In  his  youth,  however,  the  mysticism  was  very  naive  and  straightforward.  It 
was  fostered  by  one  of  the  very  few  excursions  which  Rossetti  ever  took — a  tour 
in  Belgium  in  October,  1849.  ^  ^"i  told  that  he  and  the  painter-friend  who  ac- 
companied him  were  so  purely  devoted  to  the  mediaeval  aspect  of  all  they  saw, 
that,  in  walking  through  the  galleries,  they  turned  away  their  heads  in  approach- 
ing modern  pictures,  and  carefully  closed  their  eyes  while  they  were  passing 
Rubens's  "  Descent  from  the  Cross."  In  Belgium,  or  as  the  result  of  his  tour 
there,  Rossetti  wrote  several  curious  poems,  which  were  so  harsh  and  forced  that 
he  omitted  them  from  his  collection  when  he  first  published  his  "  Poems,"  in  1870. 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI  291 

The  effort  in  these  early  pieces  is  too  marked.  I  remember  once  hearing 
Rossetti  say  that  he  did  not  mind  what  people  called  him,  if  only  they  would  not 
call  him  "quaint."  But  the  fact  was  that,  if  quaintness  he  defined  as  the  inabil- 
ity to  conceal  the  labor  of  an  art,  there  is  no  doubt  that  both  his  poems  and  his 
designs  occasionally  deserved  this  epithet.  He  was  so  excessively  sincere  an  art- 
ist, so  determined  not  to  permit  anything  like  trickiness  of  effect  or  meaningless 
smoothness  to  conceal  the  direct  statement  of  an  idea,  that  his  lack  of  initial  dis- 
cipline sometimes  made  itself  felt  in  a  curious  angular  hardness. 

And  now  it  would  be  necessary,  if  I  were  attempting  a  complete  study  of 
Gabriel  Rossetti's  intellectual  career,  to  diverge  into  a  description  of  what  has  so 
much  exercised  popular  curiosity,  the  pre-Raphaelite  movement  of  1848.  But 
there  is  no  reason  wh)-,  in  a  few  notes  on  character,  I  should  repeat  from  hearsay 
what  several  of  the  seven  brothers  have  reported  from  authoritative  memory.  It 
is  admitted,  by  them  and  by  all  who  have  understood  the  movement,  that  Ga- 
briel Rossetti  was  the  founder  and,  in  the  Shakespearian  sense,  "begetter"  of  all 
that  was  done  by  this  earnest  band  of  young  artists.  One  of  them,  Mr.  Millais, 
was  already  distinguished  ;  two  others,  Mr.  Holman  Hunt  and  Mr.  Woolner,  had 
at  that  time  more  training  and  technical  power  than  he  ;  but  he  was,  nevertheless, 
the  brain  and  soul  of  the  enterprise.  What  these  young  men  proposed  was  ex- 
cellently propounded  in  the  sonnet  by  "  \V.  M.  R.,"  which  they  prefixed  to  their 
little  literary  venture,  the  "Germ,"  in  1850.  Plainly  to  think  even  a  little 
thought,  to  express  it  in  natural  words  which  are  native  to  the  speaker,  to  paint 
even  an  insignificant  object  as  it  is,  and  not  as  the  old  masters  or  the  new  mas- 
ters have  said  it  should  be  painted,  to  persevere  in  looking  at  truth  and  at  nature 
without  the  smallest  prejudice  for  tradition,  this  was  the  whole  mystery  and  cabal 
of  the  P.  R.  B.  They  called  themseh^es  "  preraphaelite,"  because  they  found  in 
the  wings  of  Lippi's  angels,  and  the  columbines  of  Perugino's  gardens  that  lov- 
ing and  exact  study  of  minute  things  which  gave  to  them  a  sense  of  sincerity, 
and  which  they  missed  in  the  breadth  and  ease  of  later  work.  They  had  no  am- 
bition to  "  splash  as  no  one  splashed  before  since  great  Caldasi  Polidore  ;  "  but 
thev  did  wish  to  draw  a  flower  or  a  cloud  so  that  it  should  be  a  portrait  of  that 
cloud  or  flower.  In  this  ambition  it  would  be  curious  to  know,  and  I  do  not 
think  that  I  have  ever  heard  it  stated,  how  far  they  were  influenced  by  Mr.  Rus- 
kin  and  his  "  Modern  Painters."  I  should  not  expect  to  find  Rossetti  influenced 
by  any  outside  force  in  this  anv  more  than  in  other  instances,  but  at  all  events 
Mr.  Ruskin  eagerly  accepted  the  brojtherhood  as  practical  exponents  of  the  theo- 
ries he  had  pronounced.  None  of  them,  I  think,  knew  him  personally  when  he 
wrote  the  famous  letter  to  the  Times  in  1851,  defending  Mr.  Millais  and  Mr. 
Holman  Hunt  from  the  abuse  of  ignorant  critics,  who,  he  said;  had  failed  to 
perceive  the  v^ery  principles  on  which  these  "two  young  men"  were  proceeding. 
Somebodv  wrote  to  him  to  explain  that  there  were  "three  young  men,"  and  Mr. 
Ruskin  wrote  a  note  to  Gabriel  Rossetti,  desiring  to  see  his  work,  and  thus  the 
acquaintance  of  these  two  remarkable  men  commenced. 

Meanwhile,  although  the   more  vigorous  members  of  the  brotherhood   had 


292  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

shown  no  special  sympathy  for  Rossetti's  religious  mysticism,  a  feebler  artist, 
himself  one  of  the  original  seven,  had  taken  it  up  with  embarrassing  effusion. 
This  was  the  late  James  Collinson,  whose  principal  picture,  "  St.  Elizabeth  of 
Hungary,"  finished  in  1851,  produced  a  sort  of  crisis  in  Rossetti's  career.  This 
painting  out-mystified  the  mystic  himself  ;  it  was  simply  maudlin  and  hysterical, 
though  drawn  with  some  feeling  for  grace,  and  in  a  very  earnest  spirit.  Rossetti, 
with  his  strong  good  sense,  recognized  that  it  would  be  impossible  ever  to  reach 
the  public  with  art  of  this  unmanly  character,  and  from  this  time  forth  he  began 
to  abandon  the  practice  of  directly  sacred  art. 

For  some  little  time  after  abandoning  the  directly  sacred  field  in  painting, 
Rossetti  seems  to  have  passed  through  a  disconsolate  and  dubious  period.  I  am 
told  that  he  worked  for  many  months  over  a  large  picture  called  "  Kate  the 
Queen,"  from  some  well-known  words  by  Browning.  He  made  no  progress 
with  this,  seemed  dissatisfied  with  his  own  media,  felt  the  weight  of  his  lack  of 
training,  and  passed,  in  short,  through  one  of  those  downcast  moods,  which  Shake- 
speare has  so  marvellously  described  in  "Tired  with  all  these,"  and  which  are  inci- 
dent, sooner  or  later,  to  every  man  of  genius.  While  his  touch  in  poetry  grew 
constantly  more  sure  and  masterly,  his  power  as  a  draughtsman  threatened  to 
leave  him  altogether.  He  was  to  have  drawn  one  of  the  frontispieces  in  the 
"Germ,"  but,  although  he  toiled  with  a  design,  he  could  not  make  it  "come 
right."  At  last  a  happy  accident  put  him  on  the  true  track,  and  revealed  iiis 
proper  genius  to  himself.  He  began  to  make  small  drawings  of  poetical  subjects 
in  water-colors — most  of  those  which  I  have  seen  are  not  more  than  twenty  inches 
by  twelve — over  which  he  labored,  and  into  which  he  poured  his  exquisite  sense 
of  color,  inspired  without  doubt  by  the  glass  of  mediaeval  church  windows.  He 
travelled  so  very  little,  that  I  do  not  know  whether  he  ever  saw  the  treasures  of 
radiant  jewel-work  which  fret  the  gloom  of  Chartres  or  of  Bourges  ;  but  if  he 
never  saw  them,  he  divined  them,  and  these  are  the  only  pieces  of  color  which  in 
the  least  degree  suggest  the  drawings  of  this,  Rossetti's  second  period.  As  far 
as  one  can  gather,  his  method  was,  first,  to  become  interpenetrated  with  the  senti- 
ment of  some  ballad  or  passage  of  emotional  poetry,  then  to  meditate  on  the 
scene  till  he  saw  it  clearly  before  him  ;  then — and  this  seems  to  have  always  been 
the  difficult  and  tedious  part — to  draw  in  the  design,  and  then  with  triumphant 
ease  to  fill  in  the  outlines  with  radiant  color.  He  had  an  almost  insuperable 
difficulty  in  keeping  his  composition  within  the  confines  of  the  paper  upon  which 
he  worked,  and  at  last  was  content  to  have  a  purely  accidental  limit  to  the  design, 
no  matter  what  limbs  of  the  dramatis  pcrsoncs  were  sheered  away  by  the  frame. 
It  would  not  be  the  act  of  a  true  friend  to  Rossetti's  memory  to  pretend  that 
these  drawings,  of  which  for  the  next  ten  or  fifteen  years  he  continued  to  pro- 
duce a  great  number,  were  without  faults  of  a  nature  which  any  coxcomb  could 
perceive,  or  without  eccentricities  which  an  untrained  eye  might  easily  mistake 
for  faults  ;  but  this  does  not  in  the  least  militate  against  the  fact  that  in  two  great 
departments  of  the  painter's  faculty,  in  imaginative  sentiment  and  in  wealth  of 
color,  they  have  never  been  surpassed.     They  have  rarely,  indeed,  been  equalled 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI  293 

in  the  history  of  painting.  A  Rossetti  drawing  of  this  class  hung  with  specimens 
of  other  art,  ancient  or  modern,  simply  destroys  them.  I  do  not  mean  that  it  is 
better  or  worse  than  they  are,  but  that  it  kills  them  as  the  electric  light  puts  out 
a  glow-worm.  No  other  man's  color  will  bear  these  points  of  ruby-crimson,  these 
expanses  of  deep  turquoise-blue,  these  flagrant  scarlets  and  thunderous  purples. 
He  paints  the  sleeve  of  a  trumpeter ;  it  is  such  an  orange  as  the  eye  can  scarce 
endure  to  look  at.  He  paints  the  tiles  of  a  chimney-corner;  they  are  as  green 
as  the  peacock's  eyes  in  the  sunshine. 

The  world  is  seldom  ready  to  receive  any  new  thing.  These  drawings  of 
Rossetti's  were  scarcely  noticed  even  by  those  who  are  habitually  on  the  watch 
for  fresh  developments  in  art.  But  when  the  painter  next  emerges  into  some- 
thing like  publicity  we  find  him  attended  by  a  brilliant  company  of  younger 
men,  all  more  or  less  influenced  by  his  teaching  and  attracted  by  his  gifts.  The 
Pre-Raphaelite  Brotherhood  had  been  a  very  ephemeral  institution  ;  in  three 
years,  or  four  at  the  most,  it  had  ceased  to  exist ;  but  its  principles  and  the  en- 
ergy of  its  founder  had  left  their  mark  on  the  whole  world  of  art.  In  1849  Ros- 
setti had  exhibited  his  picture,  "  The  Girlhood  of  Mary  Virgin,"  at  the  Portland 
Gallery,  an  exhibition  in  rivalry  of  the  Royal  Academy,  which  existed  but  a  very 
short  time.  As  far  as  I  can  discover,  he  did  not  exhibit  again  in  London  until 
1856,  when  he  and  his  friends  opened  a  collection  of  their  pictures  at  4  Russell 
Place,  Fitzroy  Square.  We  would  rather  have  seen  that  little  gallery  than  see 
most  of  the  show-exhibitions  of  Europe.  In  it  the  fine  art  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race  was  seen  dawning  again  after  its  long  and  dark  night.  Rossetti  himself  was 
the  principal  exhibitor,  but  his  two  earliest  colleagues,  now  famous  painters,  Mr. 
Millais  and  Mr.  Holman  Hunt,  also  contributed.  And  here  were  all  the  new 
talents  whom  Rossetti  had  attracted  around  him  during  the  last  seven  years  :  Mr. 
Madox  Brown,  with  his  fine  genius  for  history  ;  Mr.  J.  D.  Watson,  with  his 
strong  mediaeval  affinities ;  Mr.  Boyce,  with  his  delicate  portraiture  of  rustic 
scenes  ;  Mr.  Brett,  the  finest  of  our  students  of  the  sea  ;  Mr.  W.  B.  Scott  him- 
self ;  besides  one  or  two  others,  Mr.  Charles  Collins,  Mr.  Campbell,  Mr.  Halli- 
day,  Mr.  Martineau,  whom  death  or  adverse  fortune  removed  before  they  had 
quite  fulfilled  their  promise.  Gabriel  Rossetti  contributed  to  this  interesting  and 
historic  exhibition  five  or  six  of  those  marvellous  drawings  of  which  mention  has 
just  been  made.  "  Dante's  Dream,"  the  famous  vision  of  June  9,  1290,  with  its 
counterpart,  "The  Anniversary  of  the  Dream,"  in  1291,  were  the  most  promi- 
nent of  these.  A  "  Mary  Magdalene"  was  perhaps  the  most  moving  and  excit- 
ing. This  extremely  original  design  showed  the  Magdalene  pursued  by  her  lov- 
ers, but  turning  away  from  them  all  to  seek  Jesus  in  the  house  of  Simon  the 
Pharisee.  The  architecture  in  this  drawing  was  almost  childish  ;  the  wall  of 
Simon's  house  is  not  three  inches  thick,  and  there  is  not  room  for  a  grown-up 
person  on  the  stairs  that  lead  to  it ;  but  the  tender  imagination  of  the  whole,  the 
sweet  persuasiveness  of  Christ,  who  looks  out  of  a  window,  the  passion  of  the 
awakened  sinner,  who  tears  the  roses  out  of  her  hair,  the  curious  novelty  of 
treatment  in  the  heads  and  draperies,  all  these  combine  to  make  it  one  of  those 


294  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

works,  the  moral  force  and  directness  of  which  appeal  to  the  heart  at  once.  Per- 
haps the  most  brilliant  piece  of  color  at  the  Russell  Place  Gallery  may  have  been 
Rossetti's  "  Blue  Closet,"  a  picture  which  either  illustrated  or,  as  I  should  rather 
suppose,  suggested  Mr.  Morris's  wonderful  poem  published  two  years  later. 

The  same  year  that  displayed  him  to  the  public  already  surrounded  by  a  brill- 
iant phalan.x  of  painter-friends,  discovered  him  also,  to  the  judicious,  as  a  centre 
of  j)oetic  light  and  heat.  The  circumstances  connected  with  Rossetti's  visit  to 
Oxford  a  little  earlier  than  this  are  too  recent,  are  fresh  in  the  memories  of  too 
many  living  persons  of  distinction,  to  be  discussed  with  propriety  by  one  who 
was  not  present.  But  certain  facts  are  public,  and  may  be  mentioned.  The  Ox- 
ford Union  still  shows  around  the  interior  of  its  cupola  strange,  shadowy  frescoes, 
melting  into  nothingness,  which  are  the  work  of  six  men,  of  whom  Rossetti  was 
the  leader.  These  youths  had  enjoyed  no  practical  training  in  that  particularly 
artificial  branch  of  art,  mural  painting,  and  yet  it  seems  strange  that  Rossetti  him- 
self, at  least,  should  not  have  understood  that  a  vehicle,  such  as  yolk  of  egg 
mixed  with  vinegar,  was  absolutely  necessary  to  tempera,  or  that  it  was  proper, 
in  fresco-painting,  to  prepare  the  walls,  and  paint  in  the  fresh  wet  mortar.  Thev 
used  no  vehicle,  they  fixed  their  colors  in  no  coat  of  plaster,  but  they  threw  their 
ineff"ectual  dry  paint  on  the  naked  brick.  The  result  has  been  that  their  interest- 
ing boyish  efforts  are  now  decayed  beyond  any  chance  of  restoration.  It  is  im- 
possible, however,  to  ascend  the  gallery  of  the  Oxford  Union  and  examine  the 
ghostly  frescoes  that  are  fading  there,  without  great  interest  and  even  emotion. 
Of  the  young  men  who  painted  there  under  Gabriel  Rossetti's  eye,  all  have  be- 
come greatly  distinguished.  Mr.  Edward  Burne-Jones,  Mr.  William  Morris,  and 
Mr.  Spencer  Stanhope  were  undergraduates  at  Oxford.  Mr.  Valentine  Prinsep 
and  Mr.  Arthur  Hughes,  I  believe,  were  Royal  Academy  students  who  were  in- 
vited down  bv  Rossetti.  Their  work  was  naive  and  queer  to  the  last  degree.  It 
is  perhaps  not  fair  to  say  which  one  of  them  found  so  much  difficulty  in  painting 
the  legs  of  his  figures  that  he  drew  an  impenetrable  covert  of  sunflowers  right 
across  his  picture,  and  only  showed  the  faces  of  his  heroes  and  heroines  between 
the  golden  disks. 

The  Oxfoi-d  and  Cambridge  Magazine,  which  also  dates  from  the  year  1856, 
is  a  still  more  notable  expression  of  budding  genius  than  the  dome  of  the  Oxford 
Union.  It  was  edited  by  Mr.  Godfrey  Lushington,  all  its  articles  were  anony- 
mous, and  it  contrived  to  exist  through  twelve  consecutive  monthly  numbers. 
A  complete  set  is  now  rare,  and  the  periodical  itself  is  much  less  known  than  be- 
fits such  a  receptacle  of  pure  literature.  It  contains  three  or  four  of  Rossetti's 
finest  poems  ;  a  great  many  of  those  extraordinary  pieces,  steeped  in  mediaeval 
coloring,  which  Mr.  William  Morris  was  to  collect  in  1858  into  his  bewitching 
volume,  called  "  The  Defence  of  Guenevere  ;  "  sev^eral  delightful  prose  stories  of 
life  in  the  Middle  Ages,  also  by  Mr.  Morris,  which,  like  certain  prose  romances 
by  Mr.  Burne-Jones,  have  never  been  publicly  claimed  or  reprinted  by  their 
author  ;  and  not  a  little  else  that  was  as  new  as  it  was  notable.  A  little  later 
Mr.  William  Morris's  first  book  was  dedicated  "To  my  Friend  Dante  Gabriel 


DANTE   GABRIEL   ROSSETTI  295 

Rossetti,  Painter,"  and  in  iS6o  Mr.  Swinburne  followed  with  a  like  inscription 
of  his  first-fruits,  his  tragic  drama  of  "  The  Queen-Mother."  Thus  in  the  course 
of  a  little  more  than  ten  years,  Rossetti  had  become  the  centre  and  sun  of  a  gal- 
axy of  talent  in  poetry  and  painting,  more  brilliant  perhaps  than  any  which  has 
ever  acknowledged  the  beneficent  sway  of  any  one  Englishman  of  genius. 

But  all  this  while  the  world  outside  knew  nothing  of  the  matter.  One  by  one 
the  younger  men  stepped  forward  on  the  public  stage  and  secured  the  plaudits  of 
the  discerning,  and  ascended  the  slow  incline  of  general  reputation.  But  Rossetti 
remained  obstinately  recluse,  far  preferring  to  be  the  priest  and  confessor  of 
genius  to  acting  himself  a  public  part.  To  this  determination  several  outward 
things  engaged  him  still  further.  He  married  quite  early  in  life  ;  and  his  wife, 
who  was  herself  an  artist  of  rare,  if  somewhat  wild  and  untrained  talent,  bore 
him  a  son  who  died  at  birth,  and  then  shortly  after  died  herself.  During  his 
brief  married  months  Rossetti  had  collected  the  MSS.  of  his  poems,  and  thought 
to  publish  them  ;  but  when  he  lost  his  wife,  in  a  paroxysm  of  grief  he  placed  the 
sheets  of  his  poems  in  her  coffin,  and  would  hear  no  more  a  suggestion  of  pub- 
hcation.  In  1861  he  presented  the  world  with  a  very  learned  and  beautiful  an- 
thology of  early  Italian  poetry,  and  proposed  as  early  as  that  year  to  print  his 
original  poems.  It  was  his  scheme  to  name  the  little  volume  "  Dante  in  \"erona, 
and  other  Poems  ;"  but  it  came  to  nothing.  About  1867  the  scheme  of  publica- 
tion again  took  possession  of  him.  I  have  been  told  that  a  sudden  sentiment  of 
middle  age,  the  fact  that  he  found  himself  in  his  fortieth  year,  led  him  to  con- 
quer his  scruples,  and  finally  arrange  his  pieces.  But  he  was  singularly  fastidi- 
ous ;  the  arrangement  would  never  please  him  ;  the  cover  must  be  cut  in  brass, 
the  paper  at  the  sides  must  bear  a  special  design.  These  niceties  were  rarer 
twelve  years  ago  than  they  are  now,  and  the  printers  fatigued  him  with  their  per- 
sistent obstinacy.  It  was  not  till  early  in  1870  that  the  "  Poems  "  in  stately  form 
first  appeared,  and  were  hailed  with  a  shout  of  admiration  which  was  practically 
universal. 

It  was  about  Christmas  in  that  same  year,  1870,  that  he  who  writes  these 
lines  was  first  presented  to  Gabriel  Rossetti.  The  impression  on  my  mental  eye 
is  as  fresh  as  if  it  had  been  made  yesterday,  instead  of  twelve  years  ago.  He 
was  a  man  of  average  height,  commonly  loosely  clad  in  black,  so  as  to  give  one 
something  of  the  notion  of  an  abbe ;  the  head  very  full,  and  domed  like  that  of 
Shakespeare,  as  it  was  then  usual  to  say^to  my  thinking  more  like  that  of  Chau- 
cer— in  any  case  a  head  surcharged  with  imagination  and  power,  strongly  Italian 
in  color  and  cast."  The  eyes  were  exceedingly  deep  set,  in  cavernous  sockets; 
they  were  large,  and  black,  and  full  of  a  restless  brilliance,  a  piercing  quality 
which  consoled  the  shy  novice  by  not  being  stationary.  Lastly,  a  voice  of  bell- 
like  tone  and  sonority,  a  voice  capable  of  expressing  without  effort  every  shade 
of  emotion  from  rage  and  terror  to  the  most  sublime  tenderness.  I  have  never 
heard  a  voice  so  fitted  for  poetical  efifect,  so  purely  imaginative,  and  yet,  in  its 
absence  of  rhetoric,  so  clear  and  various,  as  that  of  Gabriel  Rossetti.  I  retain 
one  special  memory  of  his  reading  in  his  own   studio   the  unfinished  MS.   of 


296  ARTISTS  AND   AUTHORS 

"Rose  Mary,"  in  1873,  which  surpassed  in  this  direction  any  pleasure  which  it 
has  been  my  lot  to  enjoy  ;  and  on  various  occasions  I  have  listened  to  his  read- 
ing of  sonnets,  his  own  and  those  of  others,  with  a  sense  that  his  intonation  re- 
vealed a  beauty  in  the  form  of  that  species  of  verse  which  it  had  never  been  seen 
to  possess  before.  I  have  already  spoken  of  his  wonderful  courtliness  to  a  new 
acquaintance,  his  bewitching  air  of  sympathy  ;  on  a  closer  intimacy  this  stately 
manner  would  break  up  into  wild  fits  of  mirth,  and  any  sketch  of  Rossetti  would 
be  incomplete  that  did  not  describe  his  loud  and  infectious  laughter.  He  lived 
very  much  apart  from  the  every-day  life  of  mankind,  not  ostentatiousl)',  but  from 
a  genuine  lack  of  interest  in  passing  events.  An  old  friend  tells  me  that  during 
the  French  Revolution  he  burst  into  Rossetti's  studio  with  the  incredible  news, 
"Louis-Philippe  has  landed  in  England!"  "Has  he?"  said  Rossetti,  calmly. 
"  What  has  he  come  for  ?  "  That  certain  political  events,  in  which  he  saw  a  great 
symbolic  significance,  could  move  him  deeply,  is  easily  proved  by  such  sonnets 
as  the  noble  "  On  the  Refusal  of  Aid  between  Nations,"  and  "  Czar  Alexander 
n."  But  such  glances  out  of  window  into  the  living  street  were  rare,  and  formed 
no  characteristic  part  of  his  scheme  of  life. 

As  a  poet  in  these  great  years  he  possessed  rare  gifts  of  passionate  utterance, 
and  harmony  of  vision  and  expression.  Mr.  Swinburne  has  characterized  these 
qualities  in  words  which  leave  no  later  commentator  the  chance  of  distinguishing 
himself.  But  it  would  be  totally  unjust,  even  in  so  cursory  and  personal  a  sketch 
as  this,  to  allow  the  impression  to  go  undisputed  that  Rossetti  preferred  the  ex- 
ternal form  to  the  inward  substance  of  poetry.  This  charge  was  brought  against 
him,  as  it  has  always  been  brought  against  earnest  students  of  poetic  art.  I  will 
rather  quote  a  few  words  from  a  letter  of  Rossetti  to  me,  written  in  1873,  when 
he  was  composing  his  own  niagnuin  opus  of  "  Rose  Mary."  I  have  always  felt 
them  to  be  very  salutary,  none  the  less  because  it  is  obvious  that  the  writer  did 
not  at  all  times  contrive,  or  perhaps  desire,  to  make  them  true  in  his  own  work  : 

"  It  seems  to  me  that  all  poetry,  to  be  really  enduring,  is  bound  to  be  as 
anmsing  (however  trivial  the  word  may  sound)  as  any  other  class  of  literature  ; 
and  I  do  not  think  that  enough  amusement  to  keep  it  alive  can  ever  be  got  out 
of  incidents  not  amounting  to  events,  or  out  of  travelling  experiences  of  an  or- 
dinary kind,  however  agreeably,  observantly,  or  even  thoughtfully  treated.  I 
would  eschew  in  writing  all  themes  that  are  not  so  trenchantly  individualized  as 
to  leave  no  margin  for  discursiveness." 

During  the  last  eight  years  of  his  life,  Rossetti's  whole  being  was  clouded  by 
the  terrible  curse  of  an  excitable  temperament — sleeplessness.  '  To  overcome  this 
enemy,  which  interfered  with  his  powers  of  work  and  concentration  of  thought, 
he  accepted  the  treacherous  aid  of  the  new  drug,  chloral,  which  was  then  vaunted 
as  perfectly  harmless  in  its  effect  upon  the  health.  The  doses  of  chloral  became 
more  and  more  necessary  to  him,  and  I  am  told  that  at  last  they  became  so  fre- 
quent and  excessive  that  no  case  has  been  recorded  in  the  annals  of  medicine  in 
which  one  patient  has  taken  so  much,  or  even  half  so  much,  chloral  as  Rossetti 
took.      Under  this  unwholesome  drug  his  constitution,  originally  a  magnificent 


DANTE    GABRIEL   ROSSETTI  297 

one,  slipped  unconsciously  into  decay,  the  more  stealthily  that  the  poison  seemed 
to  have  no  effect  whatever  on  the  powers  of  the  victim's  intellect.  He  painted 
until  physical  force  failed  him  ;  he  wrote  brilliantly  to  the  very  last,  and  two  son- 
nets dictated  by  him  on  his  death-bed  are  described  to  me  as  being  entirely 
worthy  of  his  mature  powers.  There  is  something  almost  melancholy  in  such  a 
proof  of  the  superior  vitality  of  the  brain.  If  the  mind  had  shared  the  weakness 
of  the  body,  the  insidious  enemy  might  perhaps  have  been  routed  in  time  to  se- 
cure the  elastic  rebound  of  both.  But  when  the  chloral  was  stoutly  met  at  last, 
it  was  too  late. 

So  at  the  age  of  fifty-four  we  have  lost  a  man  whom  we  should  have  retained, 
in  the  nature  of  things,  for  twenty  years  longer  in  the  plentitude  of  his  powers, 
but  for  a  mistake  in  hygiene — a  medical  experiment.  His  work  of  inspiring  the 
young,  of  projecting  his  fiery  originality  along  the  veins  of  others,  was  perhaps 
completed  ;  it  is  doubtful  whether  this  can  ever  be  continued  with  advantage 
through  more  than  two  generations.  The  prophet  is  apt  at  last  to  become  a 
tyrant,  and  from  this  ill  apotheosis  Rossetti  was  spared.  But  there  was  no  rea- 
son why  he  should  not,  for  at  least  a  score  of  years,  have  produced  noble  pictures 
and  have  written  gorgeous  poems,  emphasizing  a  personal  success  which  he  would 
have  extended,  though  he  hardly  could  have  raised  it.  Yet  he  was  always  a  mel- 
ancholy man  ;  of  late  years  he  had  become  almost  a  solitary  man.  Like  Charles 
of  Austria,  he  had  disbanded  his  body-guard,  and  had  retired  to  the  cloister. 
Perhaps  a  longer  life  would  not  have  brought  much  enjoyment  with  it.  But 
these  are  idle  speculations,  and  we  have  rather  to  call  to  our  remembrance  the 
fact  that  one  of  the  brightest  and  most  distinguished  of  our  race,  a  man  whose 
very  existence  was  a  protest  against  narrowness  of  aim  and  feebleness  of  purpose, 
one  of  the  great  torch-bearers  in  the  procession  of  English  art,  has  been  called 
from  us  in  the  prime  of  life,  before  the  full  significance  of  his  genius  had  been 
properly  felt.  He  was  the  contemporary  of  some  mighty  names  older  than  his, 
yet  there  scarcely  was  to  be  found  among  them  all  a  spirit  more  thoroughly  orig- 
inal ;  and  surely,  when  the  paltry  conflicts  of  passing  taste  are  laid  to  rest  for- 
ever, it  will  be  found  that  this  man  has  written  his  signature  indelibly  on  one  of 
the  principal  pages  of  the  register  of  our  intellectual  history. 


Unm£L_^se. 


'2y8 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


GUSTAVE   DORE* 


By  Kenyon  Cox 


I 


(1832-1883) 

T  is  now  eleven  years  since  Gus- 
tave  Dor^  died.  He  was  an 
officer  of  the  Legion  of  Honor, 
had  attained  considerable  wealth, 
and  was  probably  more  widely 
known  than  any  other  artist  of  his 
day.  His  name  was  a  household 
word  in  two  continents.  Yet  he 
died  a  disappointed  and  embit- 
tered man,  and  is  proclaimed  by 
his  friends  as  a  neglected  and 
misunderstood  genius.  He  was 
known  the  world  over  as  the  most 
astonishingly  prolific  illustrator  of 
books  that  has  ever  lived ;  he 
wished  to  be  known  in  France  as 
a  great  painter  and  a  great  sculp- 
tor, and  because  the  artists  and 
critics  of  France  never  seriously 
recognized  his  claims  to  this  glory, 
he  seems  to  have  become  a  victim 
of  the  mania  of  persecution,  and  his  naturally  sunny  nature  was  over-clouded 
with  moroseness  and  suspicion.  Hailed  by  some  as  the  emulator  and  equal  of 
the  great  names  of  the  Italian  Renaissance,  and  considered  a  great  moral  force 
— a  "  preacher  painter  " — by  others  he  has  been  denounced  as  "  designer  in  chief 
to  the  devil,"  and  described  as  a  man  wallowing  in  all  foulness  and  horror,  a  sort 
of  demon  of  frightful  power.  Both  these  extreme  judgments  are  English. 
The  late  Blanchard  Jerrold,  an  intimate  friend  and  collaborator  of  the  artist, 
takes  the  first  view.  Mr.  Ruskin  and  Mr.  Hamerton  have  taken  the  second. 
Dore's  own  countrymen  have  never  accepted  either.  Just  where,  between  them, 
the  truth  lies,  as  we  see  it,  we  shall  endeavor  to  show  in  this  article. 

The  main  facts  of  Dore's  life  may  be  dismissed  very  briefly.  He  was  born 
with  a  caul  on  January  6,  1832,  in  the  Rue  Bleue  at  Strasbourg,  near  the  Cathe- 
dral. About  1 84 1  his  father  removed  to  Bourg,  in  the  Department  of  Ain, 
where  he  was  chief  government  engineer  of  the  department.  These  two  resi- 
dences of  the  young  artist  are   supposed  to  account  for  the  mastery  of  Gothic 

*  Reprinted  by  permission,  from  the  "  Nation." 


GUSTAVE    DORE  299 

architecture  and  of  mountain  scenery  wliich  his  admirers  find  in  his  mature  work. 
He  showed  very  earlv  in  life  a  passion  for  drawing,  and,  as  a  small  child,  had 
always  a  pencil  in  his  hand,  which  he  begged  to  have  "sharpened  at  both  ends," 
that  he  might  work  longer  without  interruption.  His  father  intended  him  for 
an  engineer,  but  he  was  determined  from  the  first  to  be  an  artist.  He  was  of  a 
gay  and  jovial  disposition,  given  to  pranks  and  practical  jokes,  and  of  an  athletic 
temperament.  Theophilc  Gautier  afterward  called  him  a  "gamin  de  genie." 
In  1847,  when  he  was  fifteen  years  old,  being  in  Paris  with  his  parents,  he  called 
upon  Phillippon,  the  publisher,  and  showed  him  some  of  his  sketches.  M.  Phillip- 
pon  looked  at  them,  and  sent  a  letter  to  Dore's  parents,  persuading  them  to  allow 
the  boy  to  remain  in  Paris,  and  promising  them  to  begin  using  his  work  at  once 
and  to  pay  for  it.  Thus,  without  any  study  of  art  whatever,  he  began  his  career, 
and  in  a  few  years  had  produced  a  prodigious  quantity  of  work,  and  was  a  cele- 
brated man  before  he  was  twenty.  No  one  knows  how  manv  drawings  he  made. 
He  "lived  like  an  Arab,"  worked  early  and  late,  and  with  astonishing  rapidity 
made  thousands  of  drawings  for  the  comic  papers,  besides  early  beginning  the 
publication  of  independent  books.  One  estimate,  which  Mr.  Jerrold  thinks  ex- 
cessive, credits  him  with  having  published  forty  thousand  drawings  before  he  was 
fort}'  !  Mr.  Jerrold  himself  reckons  two  hundred  and  sixty-six  drawings  done 
in  one  year.  His  "  Labors  of  Hercules"  was  brought  out  in  1848,  when  he  was 
sixteen,  and  before  he  was  twenty-seven  he  had  published  his  "  Holy  Russia," 
his  "Wandering  Jew,"  his  illustrations  to  Balzac's  "  Contes  Drclatiques,"  to 
Rabelais,  and  many  other  authors.  His  best  work  was  done  at  an  age  whtn 
most  artists  are  painfully  acquiring  the  rudiments  of  their  art.  We  all  know  the 
books  that  followed. 

Meanwhile  he  was  determined  to  be  known  as  a  great  painter,  and,  while 
flooding  the  market  with  his  countless  illustrations,  was  working  at  great  can- 
vases of  Biblical  subjects,  which,  though  the  French  would  not  accept  them, 
were  hugely  admired  in  the  Dor^  Gallery  of  London.  Later  he  tried  sculpture 
also,  and  his  last  work  was  a  monument  to  Alexandre  Dumas,  which  he  made  at 
his  own  expense,  and  presented  to  the  city  of  Paris.  He  died  in  the  beginning 
of  the  year  1883,  worn  out  with  excessive  production — a  great  name,  but  an  un- 
satisfied man. 

Mr.  Jerrold  has  divided  his  book  into  two  parts,  dealing  first  with  Dor^  the 
illustrator,  and  then  with  Dore  the  painter  and  sculptor.  It  is  an  eminently  nat- 
ural arrangement,  and,  in  our  effort  to  arrive  at  Dord's  true  position  in  art,  we 
cannot  do  better  than  to  follow  it. 

Dor(5's  earliest  work  was  frankly  that  of  a  caricaturist.  He  had  a  quick  eye, 
no  training,  and  a  certain  extravagant  imagination,  and  caricature  was  his  inevi- 
table field.  He  was,  however,  as  Mr.  Jerrold  himself  remarks,  "a  caricaturist 
who  seldom  raises  a  laugh."  Not  hearty  fun,  still  less  delicate  humor,  was  his. 
In  the  higher  qualities  of  caricature  his  contemporaries,  Daumier  and  Gavarni, 
were  vastly  his  superiors.  An  exuberance  of  grotesque  fancv  and  a  recklessness 
of  exaggeration  were  his  dominant  notes.      His  earlier  work,  up  to  and  including 


300  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

the  Rabelais,  is  not  really  funny — to  many  minds  it  is  even  painful — but  it  is 
unmistakably  caricature  of  a  dashing,  savage  sort.  To  our  mind  it  remains  his 
best  work,  and  that  by  which  he  is  most  likely  to  live.  At  least  it  is  the  work 
that  formed  him  and  fi.xed  his  characteristics,  and  an  understanding  of  it  is  essen- 
tial to  any  judgment  of  him.  The  qualities  and  the  defects  of  his  later  work — 
that  which  is  most  praised  and  most  blamed  in  his  production — are  inherent  in 
the  work  of  this  period,  and  are  best  explained  by  a  reference  to  the  latter. 

Take,  for  instance,  what  has  been  denounced  as  his  love  of  horrors  and  of 
foulness,  his  delight  in  blood  and  massacre.  He  is  scored  for  this  as  if  he  were 
one  of  that  modern  French  school,  beginning,  perhaps,  with  Regnault,  who  have 
revelled  in  the  realistic  presentation  of  executions  and  battles,  and  have  sought 
to  effect  by  sheer  sensationalism  what  they  could  not  by  gentler  means.  It  is 
surprising  that  his  critics  have  not  seen  that  Dorc^'s  battles  are  always,  even  to  the 
end,  the  battles  of  a  caricaturist.  His  decapitated  trunks,  cloven  heads,  smoking 
hearts,  arms  still  fighting  though  severed  from  their  bodies,  are  simply  a  debauch 
of  grim  humor.  There  is  never  the  slightest  attempt  to  realize  carnage — only 
to  convey,  by  the  caricaturist's  exaggeration,  an  idea  of  colossally  impossible 
bloodthirstiness.  One  may  not  enjoy  this  kind  of  fun,  but  to  take  it  seriously, 
as  the  emanation  of  a  gloomy  and  diabolic  genius,  is  absurd. 

The  same  test  is  equally  destructive  of  much  of  the  praise  Dore  has  received. 
He  is  constantly  spoken  of,  even  by  severe  critics  of  his  painting,  as  a  great  il- 
lustrator who  identified  himself  with  the  minds  of  one  great  writer  after  another. 
But  Dore  identified. himself  with  no  one  ;  he  was  always  Dore.  Even  in  these 
early  drawings  he  cannot  keep  to  the  spirit  of  the  text,  though  the  subjects 
suited  him  much  better  than  many  he  tried  later.  There  is  a  great  deal  of  broad 
gayety  and  "  Gallic  wit  "  in  the  "  Contes  Drolatiques,"  but  it  was  not  broad 
enough  for  Dore,  and  he  has  converted  its  most  human  characters  into  impossi- 
ble grotesques. 

Another  thing  for  which  Dore  is  praised  is  his  wonderful  memory.  Mr.  Jer- 
rold  repeats  more  than  once  Dore's  phrase,  "  I  have  lots  of  collodion  in  my 
head,"  and  recounts  how  he  could  scarcely  be  induced  to  make  sketches  from 
nature,  but  relied  upon  his  memory.  He  also  speaks  of  Dore's  system  of  divid- 
ing and  subdividing  a  subject,  and  noting  the  details  in  their  places,  so  that  he 
could  reproduce  the  whole  afterward.  This  question  of  work  from  memory  is 
one  of  the  most  vital  for  an  understanding  of  Dore,  and  one  of  general  interest 
in  all  matters  of  art,  and  is  worth  attention.  Of  course,  a  man  who  made  hun- 
dreds of  drawings  every  year  could  not  work  much  from  nature,  and  came  to  rely 
upon  his  memory.  But  what  is  the  nature  of  artistic  memory,  and  how  does  it 
perform  its  task  ?  We  think  the  truth  is,  that  the  artist  who  habitually  works 
from  memory,  fills  in  his  details,  not  from  memory  of  the  object,  but  from  mem- 
ory of  the  way  he  has  formerly  drawn  similar  objects.  He  reverts  to  a  series  of 
formulae  that  he  has  gradually  accumulated.  This  man  must  have  a  cloak.  This 
is  the  way  a  cloak  is  done.  A  hand  ?  Nothing  can  be  easier  ;  the  hand  formula 
is  ready.     The  stock  in  trade  of  the  professional  illustrator  and  caricaturist  is 


GUSTAVE    DORfi  301 

made  up  of  a  thousand  such  formulae — methods  of  expression  that  convey  the 
idea  readily  enough  to  the  spectator,  but  have  little  relation  to  fact.  So  it  is  that 
Dore  never  learned,  in  the  true  sense,  to  draw.  He  had  made  for  himself  a  sort 
of  artistic  shorthand,  which  enabled  him  to  convey  his  superabundant  ideas 
quickly  and  certainly  to  his  public,  but  his  drawing  is  what  is  called  mannered 
in  the  extreme.  It  is  not  representation  of  nature  at  all,  but  pure  formula  and 
chic.  He  is  said  to  be  a  master  of  drapery,  but  he  never  drew  a  single  fold  cor- 
rectly. He  is  said  to  show  great  knowledge  of  Gothic  architecture,  but  he  never 
drew  well  a  single  column  or  finial.  In  his  later  years  he  studied  anatomy  with 
great  perseverance,  and  advocated  the  necessity  of  dissection,  saying,  "  II  faut 
fourrer  la  main  dedans  "  (You  must  stick  your  hand  in  it)  ;  but  the  manner  was 
formed,  and  he  never  drew  a  leg  with  a  bone  in  it. 

With  this  equipment  he  illustrated  Don  Quixote,  Dante,  the  Bible.  Is  it 
strange  that  he  shows  no  S3aTipathy  with  the  grand  simplicity  of  Dante,  or  the 
subtle  humor  of  Cervantes,  and  that  we  can  only  be  thankful  that  he  never  com- 
pleted his  projected  illustrations  to  Shakespeare  ?  Dov6,  the  illustrator,  was  fe- 
cund beyond  precedent,  possessed  a  certain  strange  drollery,  had  a  wonderful  flow 
of  ideas,  but  was  superficial,  theatrical,  and  mannered,  and  as  far  from  expressing 
real  horror  as  from  expressing  real  fun.  What  shall  we  say  of  Dor6  the  painter 
and  sculptor  ? 

Mr.  Jerrold  reports  a  discussion  between  Dor6  and  Theophile  Gautier,  in  which 
the  roles  of  artist  and  man  of  letters  are  strangely  reversed.  "  Gautier  and  Dore," 
he  says,  "  disagreed  fundamentally  on  the  aims  and  methods  of  art.  Gautier 
loved  correctness,  perfect  form — the  technique,  in  short,  of  art ;  whereas  Dor^  con- 
tended that  art  which  said  nothing,  which  conveyed  no  idea,  albeit  perfect  in  form 
and  color,  missed  the  highest  quality  and  raison  d'etre  of  art."  What  is  plain 
from  this  is,  that  Gautier  was  an  artist  and  cared  first  of  all  for  art,  while  Dor6 
was  never  an  artist,  properly  speaking,  at  all,  and  never  understood  the  artist's 
passion  for  perfection.  To  Dor6,  what  was  necessary  was  to  express  himself 
anyhow — who  cared  if  the  style  was  defective,  the  drawing  bad,  the  color  crude  ? 
The  idea  was  the  thing.  His  admirers  can  defend  him  only  on  this  ground,  and 
they  adopt  of  necessity  the  Philistine  point  of  view.  The  artists  of  Dora's  time 
and  country  were  very  clear  in  their  opinion.  "The  painters,"  says  Mr.  Jerrold, 
"said  he  could  not  paint." 

The  sculptors  admitted  that  he  had  ideas  in  his  groups,  but  he  was  not  sculpt- 
uresque. His  friends  protest  against  this  judgment,  and  attribute  it,  ad  nauseam, 
to  "  malevolence  "  and  "  envy."  What  if  his  technique  was  less  brilliant  than  that 
of  Hals,  they  say  ;  what  if  his  shadows  are  less  transparent  than  those  of  Rem- 
brandt (and  they  will  make  no  meaner  comparison)  ?  He  is  "  teeming  with 
noble  thougiits,"  and  these  will  put  his  work  "  on  a  level  with  the  masterpieces  of 
the  Italian  masters  of  the  sixteenth  century."  It  is  the  conception,  the  creation — 
not  the  perfect  painting  of  legs  and  arms  and  heads,  the  harmonious  grouping, 
the  happy  and  delicate  combination  of  color — by  which  the  observer  is  held  spell- 
bound.    All  these  qualities,  which  his  admirers  grudgingly  admit  that  Dord  had 


302  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

not,    are  classed   as  "mere  dexterity,"  and   are  not  considered  worth  a  second 
thought. 

This  is  the  true  literary  gospel  of  art,  but  it  is  one  that  no  artist,  and  no  critic 
who  has  any  true  feeling  of  art,  has  ever  accepted  or  will  ever  accept.  Thoughts, 
ideas,  conceptions,  may  enhance  the  value  of  a  work  of  art,  provided  it  is  first  of 
all  a  piece  of  beautiful  art  in  itself,  but  they  have  never  preserv^ed,  and  never  will 
preserve  from  oblivion  bad  painting  or  bad  sculpture.  The  style  is  the  artist,  if 
not  the  man  ;  and  of  the  two,  beautiful  painting  with  no  idea  at  all  (granting,  for 
the  sake  of  argument,  that  it  exists),  will  ever  be  infinitely  more  valuable  to  the 
world  than  the  lame  expression  of  the  noblest  thoughts.  What  may  be  the  real 
value  of  Dore's  thoughts  is  therefore  a  question  with  which  we  have  no  concern. 
As  painter  and  sculptor,  his  lack  of  education  and  his  great  technical  imperfec- 
tions^his  bad  drawing,  false  light  and  shade,  and  crude  color — relegate  him  for- 
ever to  a  rank  far  below  mediocrity.  Such  reputation  as  he  has  is  the  result  of 
the  admiration  of  those  altogether  ignorant  of  art,  but  possessed  of  enough  liter- 
ary ability  to  trumpet  abroad  their  praises  of  "great  conceptions,"  and  will  as 
surely  fade  away  to  nothing  as  the  reputation  of  such  simple  painters  as  Van 
Der  Meer  or  Chardin  will  continue  to  grow,  while  painting  as  an  art  is  loved 
and  understood. 


COMPOSERS 


HANDEL 

By  C.  E.  Bourne 

(1685-1759) 

3E0RGE  Frederick  Handel,  of  whom  Haydn  once  reverently  said, 
"  He  is  the  master  of  us  all,"  was  born  at  Halle,  in  Lower  Saxony, 
on  February  23,  1685.  His  father  was  a  surgeon,  and  sixty-three 
years  of  age  at  the  time  of  his  birth — a  terribly  severe  old  man, 
who,  almost  before  his  son  was  born,  had  determined  that  he  should 
be  a  lawyer.  The  little  child  knew  nothing  of  the  fate  before  him,  he  only 
found  that  he  was  never  allowed  to  go  near  a  musical  instrument,  much  as  he 
wanted  to  hear  its  sweet  sounds,  and  the  obstinate  father  even  took  him  away 
from  the  public  day-school  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  musical  gamut  was 
taught  there  in  addition  to  ordinary  reading,  writing,  and  arithmetic. 

But  love  always  "finds  out  the  way,"  and  his  mother  or  nurse  managed  to 
procure  for  him  the  forbidden  delights  ;  a  small  clavichord,  or  dumb  spinet,  with 
the  strings  covered  with  strips  of  cloth  to  deaden  the  sound,  was  found  for  the 


HANDEL  303 

child,  and  this  he  used  to  keep  hidden  in  the  garret,  creeping  away  to  play  it  in 
the  night-time,  when  everyone  was  asleep,  or  whenever  his  father  was  away  from 
home  doctoring  his  patients. 

But,  at  last,  when  George  Frederick  was  seven  years  of  age,  the  old  man  was 
compelled  to  change  his  views.  It  happened  in  this 
way.  He  set  out  one  day  on  a  visit  to  the  court  of  the 
Duke  of  Saxe -Weissenfels,  where  another  son  by  a 
former  marriage  was  a  page.  George  Frederick  had 
been  teasing  his  father  to  let  him  go  with  him  to  see 
his  elder  brother,  whom  he  had  not  yet  met,  but  this 
was  refused.  When  old  Handel  started  by  the  stage- 
coach the  next  morning,  the  persistent  little  fellow  was 
on  the  watch  ;  he  began  running  after  it,  and  at  length 
the  father  was  constrained  to  stop  the  coach  and  take 
the  boy  in.  So,  though  at  the  expense  of  a  severe 
scolding,  the  child  had  his  way  and  was  allowed  to  go  on 
to  Saxe-Weissenfels.  When  there,  the  chapel,  with  the 
beautiful  organ,  was  the  great  attraction,  and  George  Frederick,  as  indomitable 
then  as  he  was  in  after-life,  found  his  way  into  the  organ  loft,  and  when  the  regular 
service  was  over,  contrived  to  take  the  organist's  place,  and  began  a  performance 
of  his  own  ;  and  strange  to  say,  though  he  had  not  had  the  slightest  training,  a 
melody  with  chords  and  the  correct  harmonies  was  heard.  The  duke  had  not  left 
the  chapel,  and  noticing  the  difference  in  style  from  that  of  the  ordinary  organist, 
inquired  as  to  the  player,  and  when  the  little  boy  was  brought  to  him  he  soon  dis- 
covered, by  the  questions  he  put,  the  great  passion  for  music  which  possessed  the 
child.  The  duke,  a  sensible  man,  told  the  father  it  would  be  wrong  to  oppose  the 
inclination  of  a  boy  who  already  displaved  such  extraordinarv  genius  ;  and  old 
Handel,  either  convinced,  or  at  any  rate  submitting  to  the  duke's  advice,  promised 
to  procure  for  his  son  regular  musical  instruments.  Handel  never  afterward  forgot 
the  debt  of  gratitude  he  owed  to  the  Duke  of  Saxe-Weissenfels  for  this  intercession. 

On  his  return  to  Halle  he  became  the  pupil  of  Zachau,  the  organist  of  the 
cathedral  there.  This  man  was  an  excellent  teacher  and  a  sound  musician.  Be- 
fore the  pupil  was  nine  years  old  his  instructor  used  to  set  him  to  write  fugues 
and  motets  as  exercises,  and  before  long  the  boy  was  allowed  to  play  the  organ 
at  the  cathedral  services  on  Sunday,  whenever  the  elder  musician  was  inclined  to 
linger  over  his  breakfast  or  to  take  a  holiday.  At  last,  when  young  Handel  was 
nine  years  old,  the  master  honestly  confessed  that  his  pupil  knew  more  music 
than  he  himself  did,  and  advised  that  he  should  be  sent  to  Berlin  for  a  course  of 
further  study  there.     Thither  he  accordingly  went  in  the  year  1696. 

In  Berlin  the  boy  of  eleven  years  was  soon  recognized  as  a  prodigy.  There 
he  met  two  Italian  composers  of  established  reputation,  Bononcini  and  Attilio 
Ariosti,  both  of  whom  he  was  to  encounter  in  after-life,  though  under  very  dif- 
ferent circumstances,  in  London.  Bononcini,  who  was  of  a  sour  and  jealous  dis- 
position, soon  conceived  a  dislike  for  the  gifted  little  fellow,  and  attempted  to 


301  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

injure  him  by  composing  a  piece  for  the  harpsichord  full  of  the  most  extraordi- 
nary difficulties,  and  then  asking  him  to  play  it  at  sight.  The  boy,  however,  at 
once  executed  it  without  a  mistake,  and  thus  the  malicious  schemer  was  foiled 
by  his  own  device.  Attilio  was  of  a  different  disposition  ;  he  praised  the  young 
musician  to  the  skies,  and  was  never  weary  of  sitting  by  his  side  at  the  organ  or 
harpsichord,  and  hearing  him  improvise  for  hours.  •  The  Elector  of  Brandenburg 
also  conceived  a  great  admiration  for  the  boy's  talents,  and  offered  to  send  him 
to  Italy.  On  old  Handel  being  consulted,  however,  he  pleaded  that  he  was  now 
an  old  man,  and  wished  his  son  to  remain  near  him.  In  consequence  of  this, 
probably  much  to  the  boy's  disappointment,  he  was  brought  back  to  Halle,  and 
there  set  to  work  again  under  his  old  master,  Zachau. 

Soon  after  this  return  his  father  died,  in  1697,  leaving  hardly  anything  for 
his  family,  and  young  Handel  had  now  to  seriously  bestir  himself  to  make  a 
living.  With  this  object  he  went  to  Hamburg,  where  he  obtained  a  place  as 
second  violin  in  the  Opera-house.  Soon  after  arriving  there,  the  post  of  organ- 
ist at  Liibeck  became  vacant,  and  Handel  was  a  candidate  for  it.  But  a  pecul- 
iar condition  was  attached  to  the  acceptance  of  the  office  ;  the  new  organist 
must  marry  the  daughter  of  the  old  one  !  And,  as  Handel  either  did  not  ap- 
prov'c  of  the  lady,  or  of  matrimony  generally  (and  in  fact  he  never  was  married), 
he  promptly  retired  from  the  competition.  At  first,  no  one  suspected  the  youth's 
talents,  for  he  amused  himself  by  pretending  to  be  an  ignoramus,  until  one  day 
the  accompanyist  on  the  harpsichord  (then  the  most  important  instrument  in  an 
orchestra)  was  absent,  and  young  Handel  took  his  place,  astonishing  everybody 
by  his  masterly  touch.  Probably  this  discovery  aroused  the  jealousy  of  some  of 
his  brother-artists,  for  soon  afterward  a  duel  took  place  between  him  and  Mathe- 
son,  a  clever  composer  and  singer,  who  one  night,  in  the  midst  of  a  quarrel  on 
leaving  the  theatre,  gave  him  a  box  on  the  ear  ;  swords  were  drawn,  and  the  duel 
took  place  there  and  then  under  the  portico  of  the  theatre.  Fortunately  Mathe 
son's  weapon  was  shivered  by  coming  in  contact  with  a  metal  button  on  his  op- 
ponent's coat.  Explanations  were  then  offered,  and  the  two  adversaries  became 
friends — indeed,  close  friends — afterward.  "  Almira,  Queen  of  Castile,"  Handel's 
first  opera,  was  brought  out  in  Hamburg  in  1 705,  and  was  followed  by  two 
others,  "  Nero,"  and  "  Daphne,"  all  received  with  great  favor,  and  frequently 
performed. 

But  the  young  musician  determined  to  visit  Italy  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
after  staying  in  Hamburg  three  years,  and  having,  besides  the  money  he  sent  his 
mother,  saved  two  hundred  ducats  for  travelling  expenses,  he  was  able  to  set  off 
on  the  journey,  then  one  of  the  great  events  in  a  musician's  lifetime.  He  visited 
Florence,  Venice,  Rome,  and  Naples,  in  almost  every  city  writing  operas,  which 
we  are  told  were  produced  with  the  most  brilliant  success.  At  Venice  an  opera 
was  sought  for  from  him,  and  in  three  weeks  he  had  written  "  Agrippina."  When  . 
produced,  the  people  received  it  with  frantic  enthusiasm,  the  theatre  resounding 
with  shouts  of  "  Viva  il  caro  Sassone  !  "  (Long  live  the  dear  Saxon  !  )  The  fol- 
lowing story  illustrates  the  extraordinary  fame  he  so  quickly  acquired  in  Italy.    He 


HI 

O 
oc 
o 

UJ 

o 

CE 

o 

a. 

I- 
cc 

UJ 

O 

z 
o 
o 

cc 
ai 
> 

CO 

Q 

Z 
< 

I 


HANDEL  305 

arrived  at  Venice  during  the  middle  of  the  carnival,  and  was  taken  to  a  masked 
ball,  and  there  played  the  harpsichord,  still  keeping  on  his  mask.  Domenico  Scar- 
latti, the  most  famous  harpsichord  player  of  his  age,  on  hearing  him,  exclaimed, 
"Why,  it's  the  devil,  or  else  the  Saxon  whom  ev^eryone  is  talking  about!"  In 
1709  he  returned  to  Hanover,  and  was  appointed  by  the  Elector  George  of 
Brunswick,  afterward  King  George  I.,  of  England,  his  Court  Capellmeister. 

Handel's  wanderings  next  led  him  to  England,  where  he  was  treated  with  so 
much  honor  that  he  showed  no  great  hurry  to  return  to  Hanover,  and,  in  fact, 
he  remained  in  England  and  coolly  ignored  his  engagement  as  Capellmeister. 
But  an  awkward  piece  of  retribution  was  at  hand.  The  Elector  of  Hanover,  on 
the  death  of  Queen  Anne,  came  to  England  as  the  new  king,  and  Handel,  his 
delinquent  Capellmeister,  could  hardly  expect  to  receive  any  share  of  the  royal 
favor  in  future.  With  the  help  of  a  friend  of  his.  Baron  Kilmanseck,  he  deter- 
mined, however,  to  make  an  attempt  to  conciliate  the  king,  and  accordingly  he 
wrote  twenty-five  short  concerted  pieces  of  music,  and  made  arrangements  for 
these  to  be  performed  by  musicians  in  a  boat  following  the  royal  barge  on  the 
Thames,  one  day  when  the  king  went  on  an  excursion  up  the  river  for  a  picnic. 
The  king  recognized  the  composer  at  once  by  his  style,  and  spoke  in  terms  of 
approbation  of  the  music,  and  the  news  was  quickly  conveyed  by  his  friend  to  the 
anxious  musician.  This  is  the  story  of  the  origin  of  the  famous  "Water  Music." 
Soon  afterward  the  king  allowed  Handel  to  appear  before  him  to  play  the  harpsi- 
chord accompaniments  to  some  sonatas  executed  by  Geminiani,  a  celebrated  Ital- 
ian violinist,  and  finally  peace  was  made  between  them,  Handel  being  appointed 
music-master  to  the  royal  children,  and  receiving  an  additional  pension  of  ;/^200. 
In  1726  a  private  Act  of  Parliament  was  passed,  making  George  Frederick  Han- 
del a  naturalized  Englishman. 

In  the  year  1720  a  number  of  noblemen  formed  themselves  into  a  company 
for  the  purpose  of  reviving  Italian  opera  in  London,  at  the  Havmarket  Theatre, 
and  subscribed  a  capital  of  ^'50,000.  The  king  himself  subscribed  ^1,000,  and 
allowed  the  society  to  take  the  name  of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Music,  and  at 
first  everything  seemed  to  promise  the  most  brilliant  success.  Handel  was  ap- 
pointed director  of  the  music.  Bononcini  and  Attilio  Ariosti,  his  old  acquaint- 
ances in  Berlin,  were  also  attracted  by  this  new  operatic  venture  to  London,  and 
their  arrival  was  followed  by  a  competition  of  a  very  novel  character.  The  li- 
bretto of  a  new  opera,  "Muzio  Scsevola,"  was  divided  between  the  three  com- 
posers. Attilio  was  to  put  the  first  act  to  music,  Bononcini  the  second,  and 
Handel  the  third.  We  need  hardly  wonder  that  the  victory  is  said  to  have  rested 
with  the  last  and  youngest  of  the  trio,  although  at  this  time  the  cabals  against 
him,  which  afterward  were  to  do  him  such  grievous  harm,  had  already  commenced. 

Handel  still  clung  to  the  operatic  speculation  ;  and  when  he  had  to  leave  the 
Haymarket  Theatre,  which  was  given  up  to  another  Italian  company  with  the 
famous  Farinelli,  from  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  undauntedly  he  changed  to  the  Lin- 
coln's Inn  Fields  Theatre,  and  there  commenced  again.  More  operas  were  pro- 
duced, with  the  one  unvarying  tale  of  fiasco,  and  at  last,  in  1737,  having  lost  the 
20 


306  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

whole  of  his  hardly  earned  money,  Handel  was  compelled  to  close  the  theatre, 
and,  worse  than  all,  to  suspend  payment  for  a  time.  Happily  he  now  turned  his 
thoughts  to  oratorio.  "  Saul "  and  "Israel  in  Egypt "  were  composed  in  quick 
succession  ;  the  last  gigantic  work  being  written  in  the  almost  incredibly  short 
space  of  twenty-seven  days.  How  great  it  is  everyone  now  knows,  but,  at  the 
time  the  colossal  choruses  were  actually  considered  a  great  deal  too  heavy  and 
monotonous  ;  and  Handel,  always  quick  in  resource,  at  the  second  performance 
introduced  a  number  of  operatic  songs  to  make  them  go  down  better,  and  after 
the  third  performance  the  piece  was  withdrawn  altogether.  Fortunately,  opin- 
ions have  changed  since  then.  These  works  were  followed  by  his  fine  setting  of 
Dryden's  "Ode  on  St.  Cecilia's  Day,"  and  Milton's  "  L' Allegro  "  and  "II  Pense- 
roso  ; "  but  it  cannot  be  said  that  his  pecuniary  affairs  were  materially  improved  by 
their  production. 

The  first  performance  of  his  greatest  oratorio,  the  "  Messiah,"  took  place  at 
Neale's  Music  Hall,  in  Dublin,  on  April  i8,  1742,  at  mid-day,  and,  apropos 
of  the  absurdities  of  fashion,  it  may  be  noticed  that  the  announcements  con- 
tained the  following  request :  "  That  ladies  who  honor  this  performance  with 
their  presence,  will  be  pleased  to  come  without  hoops,  as  it  will  greatly  increase 
the  charity  by  making  room  for  more  company."  The  work  was  gloriously  suc- 
cessful, and  ^400  were  obtained  the  first  day  for  the  Dublin  charities.  Handel 
seems  always  to  have  had  a  special  feeling  with  regard  to  this  masterpiece  of  his 
— as  if  it  were  too  sacred  to  be  merel}^  used  for  making  money  by,  like  his  other 
works.  He  very  frequently  assisted  at  its  performance  for  the  benefit  of  the 
Foundling  Hospital,  and  he  left  the  score  as  a  precious  gift  to  the  governor  of 
that  institution.  This  work  alone  brought  no  less  a  sum  than  ^10,299  to  the 
funds  of  the  hospital.  In  this  connection  a  fine  saying  of  his  may  be  repeated. 
Lord  Kinnoul  had  complimented  him  on  the  noble  "entertainment "  which  by 
the  "  Messiah  "  he  had  lately  given  the  town.  "  My  Lord,"  said  Handel,  "  I 
should  be  sorry  if  I  only  entertained  them — I  wish  to  make  them  better."  And 
when  someone  questioned  him  on  his  feelings  when  composing  the  "  Hallelujah 
Chorus,"  he  replied  in  his  peculiar  English,  "  I  did  think  I  did  see  all  heaven  be- 
fore me,  and  the  great  God  himself."  What  a  fine  saying  that  was  of  poor  old 
George  III.,  in  describing  the  "pastoral  symphony"  in  this  oratorio — "I  could 
see  the  stars  shining  through  it  ! " 

The  now  constant  custom  of  the  audience  to  rise  and  remain  standing  during 
the  performance  of  this  chorus,  is  said  to  have  originated  in  the  following  man- 
ner: On  the  first  production  of  the  work  in  London,  "the  audience  were  ex- 
ceedingly struck  and  affected  by  the  music  in  general  ;  but  when  that  chorus 
struck  up,  '  For  the  Lord  God  Omnipotent '  in  the  'Hallelujah,'  they  were  so 
transported  that  they  all  together,  with  the  king  (who  happened  to  be  present), 
started  up  and  remained  standing  till  the  chorus  ended."  "This  anecdote  I  had 
from  Lord  Kinnoul."  So  says  Dr.  Beattie,  the  once  famous  poet,  in  one  of 
his  letters. 

The  "Messiah  "  was  commenced  on  August  22,  1741,  finished  on   September 


HANDEL  307 

1 2th,  and  the  orchestration  filled  up  two  days  afterward — the  whole  work  thus 
being  completed  in  twenty-three  days.     Handel  was  fifty-six  years  old  at  the  time. 

The  next  ten  years  of  the  life  of  the  "  Goliath  of  Music,"  as  he  has  been 
called,  are  marked  by  some  of  the  most  splendid  achievements  of  his  genius. 
"Samson,"  the  "  Dettingen  Te  Deum,"  "Joseph,"  "  Belshazzar,"  "The  Occa- 
sional Oratorio,"  "Judas  Maccabeus,"  "Joshua,"  "Solomon."  and,  "Theodora," 
being  composed  by  him  during  this  time,  when,  already  an  old  man,  it  might 
have  been  thought  that  he  would  have  taken  some  repose  after  the  labors  of  so 
toilsome  and  troubled  a  life.  But,  oak-like,  he  was  one  of  those  who  mature  late  ; 
like  Milton,  his  greatest  works  were  those  of  his  old  age. 

But  a  terrible  misfortune  was  approaching — his  eyesight  was  failing.  The 
"  drop  serene,"  of  which  Milton  speaks  so  pathetically,  had  fallen  on  his  eyes, 
and  at  the  time  when,  in  February,  1752,  he  was  composing  his  last  work,  "  Jeph- 
tha"  (the  one  containing  "  Deeper  and  Deeper  Still,"  and  "Waft  her.  Angels  "), 
the  effort  in  tracing  the  lines  is,  in  the  original  MS.,  very  painfully  apparent. 
Soon  afterward  he  submitted  to  three  operations,  but  they  were  in  vain,  and 
henceforth  all  was  to  be  dark  to  him.  His  sole  remaining  work  was  now  to  im- 
provise on  the  organ,  and  to  play  at  performances  of  his  oratorios.  There  is  a 
pathetic  story  told  of  an  incident  that  occurred  on  one  occasion,  when  "  Samson" 
was  given.     While  the  magnificent  air. 

Total  eclipse  !  no  sun,  no  moon  ! 
All  dark,  amidst  the  blaze  of  noon. 
O  glorious  light !  no  cheering  ray 
To  glad  my  eyes  with  welcome  day. 
Why  thus  deprived  thy  prime  decree  ? 
Sun,  moon,  and  stars  are  dark  to  me — 

was  being  sung  by  Beard,  the  tenor,  the  blind  old  man,  seated  at  the  organ,  was 
seen  to  tremble  and  grow  pale,  and  then,  when  he  was  led  forward  to  the  audi- 
ence to  receive  their  applause,  tears  were  in  the  eyes  of  nearly  everyone  present 
at  the  sight.  It  was  like  the  scene  that  is  described  in  Beethoven's  life  on  the 
occasion  of  that  composer's  appearance,  when  almost  totally  deaf,  to  conduct  his 
great  Choral  Symphony  at  Vienna. 

One  night,  on  returning  home  from  a  performance  of  the  "  Messiah "  at 
Covent  Garden,  Handel  was  seized  with  sudden  weakness  and  retired  hurriedly 
to  bed,  from  which  he  was  never  to  rise  again.  He  prayed  that  he  might 
breathe  his  last  on  Good  Friday,  "  in  hope  of  meeting  his  God,  his  sweet  Lord 
and  Saviour  on  the  day  of  his  resurrection."  And  strangely  enough  his  wish  was 
granted,  for  on  Good  Friday,  April  13,  1759,  he  quietly  passed  away  from  this 
life,  being  then  seventy-four  years  of  age.  His  remains  were  laid  in  Poets'  Cor- 
ner in  Westminster  vVbbcy,  and  the  place  is  marked  by  a  statue  by  Roubilliac, 
representing  him  leaning  over  a  table  covered  with  musical  instruments,  his  hand 
holding  a  pen,  and  before  him  is  laid  the  "  Messiah,"  open  at  the  words,  "  I  know 
that  my  Redeemer  liveth." 


308 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


MOZART 


By  C.  E.  Bourne 


(1756-1791) 


LEOPOLD  Mozart  was  a  violinist  in  the  band  of  Arch- 
bishop Sigismund,  the  reigning  Prince  of  Salzburg, 
and  it  was  probably  in  compliment  to  his  master  that  he 
bestowed  on  the  youngest  of  his  seven  children  the  name 
of  Joannes  Chrysostomus  Wolfgangus  Theophilus  Sigis- 
mundus.  Born  on  January  27,  1756,  this  child  was  des- 
tined to  make  the  name  of  Mozart  famous  wherever 
music  is  known  ;  and  surely  no  more  beautiful  life — 
beautiful  in  itself  and  in  the  works  of  immortal  beauty 
wliich  in  its  short  course  were  produced — has  ever  been 
lived  by  anyone  of  those  to  whom  the  crown  of  inspired 
singers  and  an  enduring  monument  in  the  temple  of  art 
has  been  given.  "  Look  around,"  was  the  epitaph  on  a 
great  architect.  "  Listen,"  is  the  most  fitting  tribute  to 
the  wonderful  genius  of  a  Mozart. 

Infant  prodigies  very  often  turn  out  to  be  nobodies 
in  after-life.  But  Mozart  was  an  exception  ;  and  though 
he  might  well  have  been  called  "the  marvellous  boy,"  his 
latest  works — and  he  died  at  the  early  age  of  thirty-five — 
Avere  undoubtedly  his  grandest  and  most  perfect.  He  be- 
gan very  early  to  compose.  One  of  these  first  attempts  was 
a  concerto  so  difficult  that  no  one  could  play  it  ;  but  the 
child  undauntedly  said,  "  Why,  that's  the  very  reason  why 
it  is  called  a  concerto  ;  people  must  practise  it  before  they  can  play  it  perfectly." 
Wolfgang  and  his  sister,  Nannerl,  as  he  used  to  call  her,  had  been  taken  by 
their  father,  in  1762,  to  Vienna,  where  the  children  played  the  piano  before  the 
Empress  Maria  Theresa  and  her  husband.  Little  Wolfgang  was  here,  as  every- 
where, perfectly  at  his  ease,  with  a  simplicity  and  childish  grace  that  won  every 
heart.  When  he  had  been  playing  for  some  time,  he  jumped  without  ceremony 
on  the  lap  of  the  empress,  and  kissed  her  heartily  for  being  so  good  to  him. 
Little  Marie  Antoinette,  her  daughter,  afterward  the  ill-fated  wife  of  Louis 
XVI.,  and  then  about  the  same  age  as  Wolfgang,  he  treated  in  almost  the  same 
way.  He  had  slipped  on  the  polished  floor,  to  which  he  was  unaccustomed,  and 
the  little  princess  had  hurried  forward  to  raise  him  up,  on  which  he  promptly 
said,  "You  are  good;  I  will  marry  you."  The  empress  asked  why  he  wished 
this,  to  which  he  answered,  "  Out  of  gratitude  ;  she  was  kind,  while  her  sister 
took  no  notice  of  me  "  (she  had  not  come  forward  to  help  him).     After  return- 


MOZART  309 

ing  to  Salzburg,  Leopold  Mozart,  in  the  spring  of  1763,  took  his  children  on  a 
more  lengthy  tour  to  Munich,  Paris,  London,  and  The  Hague,  and  everywhere 
their  playing,  especially  Wolfgang's  performances  on  the  organ,  which  he  had 
now  learned,  were  listened  to  with  delight  and  astonishment.  At  Heidelberg 
the  priest  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Ghost  engraved  on  the  organ  the  boy's 
name  and  the  date  of  his  visit,  in  remembrance  of  "this  wonder  of  God,"  as  he 
called  the  child.  At  London,  old  Mozart  says,  they  were  received,  on  April 
27th,  by  King  George  III.  and  Queen  Caroline,  at  the  palace,  and  remained  from 
six  to  nine  o'clock.  The  king  placed  before  the  boy  compositions  of  Bach  and 
Handel,  all  of  which  he  played  at  sight  perfectly  ;  he  had  also  the  honor  of  ac- 
companying the  queen  in  a  song.  "  On  leaving  the  palace,"  the  careful  father 
says,  "we  received  a  present  of  24  guineas." 

A  great  delight  was  now  before  him,  for  his  father  had  resolved  on  a  journey 
to  Italy,  then  far  more  than  now  the  land  of  music.  How  much  this  visit  did 
for  the  young  maestro  it  is  impossible  to  say  ;  he  has  not,  like  Mendelssohn, 
left  us  an  "  Italian  Symphony,"  recording  the  impressions  which  that  sunny  spot 
of  classic  beauty  had  made  upon  him,  but  there  can  be  little  doubt  of  the  great 
influence  it  had  on  the  whole  of  his  after-life.  There  are  some  significant  words 
which  he  wrote  eight  years  later  to  his  father  from  Paris  :  "  You  must  faithfully 
promise  to  let  me  see  Ital}^  again  in  order  to  refresh  my  life.  I  do  entreat  of 
you  to  confer  this  happiness  upon  me."  In  Mantua,  Milan,  Bologna  (where  he 
had  the  good  fortune  to  meet  the  learned  Padre  Martini,  one  of  the  soundest 
musicians  of  his  age,  and  for  whom  he  eyer  afterward  maintained  a  warm  attach- 
ment), Florence,  Rome,  and  Naples,  the  young  genius  was  received  everywhere 
with  enthusiasm  by  the  crowds  who  came  to  hear  him.  In  Naples  the  super- 
stitious people  believed  that  there  was  magic  in  his  playing,  and  pointed  to  a 
ring  on  his  left  hand  as  the  cause  of  his  wonderful  dexterity  ;  and  it  was  only 
when  he  had  taken  this  off,  and  gone  on  playing  just  the  same,  that  they  had  to 
acknowledge  it  was  simply  the  perfection  of  art. 

There  is  something  sad  in  contrasting  these  brilliant  early  days  with  the 
anxious  times  that  came  later  on,  when  the  great  Mozart  was  compelled  to  wait 
in  the  ante-chambers  of  the  great,  dine  with  their  lacqueys,  give  lessons  to  stupid 
young  countesses,  and  write  begging  letters  to  his  friends ;  yet,  in  reality,  those 
later  days,  when  "Don  Giovanni,"  "Die  Zauberflbte,"  and  the  "Requiem,"  were 
composed,  were  the  truly  brilliant  ones.  And  it  may  be  that  the  very  greatness 
came,  in  some  measure,  from  the  sorrow  and  pain  ;  that  Mozart,  like  so  many 
others  of  the  world's  great  singers,  "  learnt  in  suffering  what  he  taught  in  song." 

On  his  return  to  Munich,  after  composing  a  comic  opera  in  the  Italian  style, 
"  La  Fihta  Giardiniera,"  which  had  a  great  success,  young  Mozart,  who  had  been 
very  shabbily  treated  by  Archbishop  Hieronymus — of  whose  spiteful  conduct 
we  shall  iiear  more  hereafter — the  successor  of  Sigismund,  determined  to  resign 
his  situation  in  the  court  band,  and  to  set  out  on  his  travels  again,  giving  concerts 
from  place  to  place,  and  everywhere  looking  out  for  some  suitable  appointment 
that  might  afford  him  a  permanent  income.     This  time  his  father  was  refused 


310  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

permission  to  travel,  and,  as  on  his  exertions  depended  the  support  of  the  whole 
family,  he  remained  behind,  while  Frau  Mozart,  the  mother,  accompanied  young 
Wolfo-ano;.  In  1777,  now  a  young  man  of  twenty-one,  he  set  out  upon  his 
second  great  artistic  tour,  buoyant  with  hope,  and  with  all  the  beautiful  audacity 
of  young  genius  determined  to  conquer  the  world.  This  time  it  was  not  the 
infant  prodig}^  whom  men  listened  to,  but  the  matured  musician  and  the  com- 
poser of  melodies  sweeter  than  men  had  ever  listened  to  before.  But  the  tale  is 
changed  now.  True,  there  are  triumphs  to  be  spoken  of,  flattery  from  the  great, 
and  presents  sent  in  recompense  for  his  marvellous  playing  (he  tells  one  day  of 
his  chagrin  in  receiving  from  a  certain  prince  a  gold  watch,  instead  of  money 
that  he  sorely  wanted — and,  besides,  he  had  five  watches  already  !)  ;  but  rebuffs, 
intrigues,  and  all  sorts  of  petty  machinations  against  him,  make  the  tale  a  sadder 
one  ;  and  so  it  continued  to  be  to  the  end. 

From  Munich — where  it  had  been  hoped  that  the  elector  would  have  given 
him  an  appointment  at  court,  but  he  was  only  told  to  go  to  Italy  and  become 
famous,   "it  was  too  early  yet  to  think   about  becoming  a  Capellmeister " — he- 
went  to  Augsburg,  spending  some  pleasant  days  there  in  the  society  of  a  cousin, 
Marianne,  nicknamed  by  him  Biisle,  a  merry,  open-hearted  girl  of  nineteen. 

Thence,  he  went  on  to  Mannheim,  a  town  that  is  memorable  as  the  place 
where  he  first  met  the  Webers,  and  made  the  acquaintance  of  Herr  Cannabich, 
the  director  of  the  music  at  the  elector's  court,  and  one  who  proved  a  stanch 
friend  through  everything  to  the  young  composer.  Cannabich  had  a  daughter 
named  Rosa,  a  girl  of  thirteen,  exceedingly  pretty  and  clever,  and  Wolfgang  ap- 
pears to  have  admired  her  very' much,  and  perhaps  for  a  time  t?o  have  flirted  and 
been  in  love  with  her.  He  wrote  her  a  sonata,  and  was  delighted  with  the  way  in 
which  she  played  it ;  the  andante,  he  said,  he  had  composed  to  represent  her,  and 
when  it  was  finished  he  vowed  she  was  just  what  the  andante  was.  But  this  lit- 
tle love  affair,  if  it  existed,  soon  was  forgotten  in  a  more  serious  one  with  Aloy- 
sia  Weber.  Her  father  was  a  theatre  copyist  in  poor  circumstances.  There  were 
a  number  of  children,  and  she  was  a  beautiful  girl  of  fifteen,  with  a  magnificent 
voice.  She  was  cousin,  by  the  way,  to  Weber,  afterward  composer  of  the 
"  Freischutz."  Mozart  was  so  charmed  with  her  voice  that  he  undertook  to  give 
her  lessons,  and  we  soon  hear  of  him  composing  airs  for  her  and  meditating  a 
concert  tour  in  Italy  in  company  with  her,  and  her  father  and  sister.  In  writing 
of  it  to  his  own  father  he  sets  out  the  advantages  to  be  gained  by  co-partnership, 
and  very  prosaically  says  :  "  Should  we  stay  long  anywhere,  the  eldest  daughter 
[Josepha,  afterward  Frau  Hofer,  for  whom  Mozart  wrote  the  part  of  Astrafiam- 
mente  in  the  "Zauberflote"]  would  be  of  the  greatest  use  to  us;  for  we  could 
have  our  own  menage,  as  she  understands  cooking."  But  papa  Mozart  decidedly 
objected.  "Your  proposal  to  travel  about  with  Herr  Weber  —  N.  B.,  two 
daughters — has  driven  me  nearly  wild,"  and  he  straightway  orders  his  son  off  to 
Paris,  whither,  with  a  parting  present  of  a  pair  of  mittens  knitted  for  him  by 
Mile.  Weber,  he  reluctantly  sets  out  in  company  with  his  mother. 

His  stay  in    Paris  during  the  next  year  was  not  very  eventful,  and   a  sym- 


MOZART  311 

phony  produced  at  the  Concerts  Spirituels  seems  to  have  been  his  most  success- 
ful work  at  this  time.  It  was  clever  and  lively,  full  of  striking  effects,  and  was 
most  warmly  applauded.  He  says:  "The  moment  the  symphony  was  over  I 
went  off  in  my  joy  to  the  Palais  Royal,  where  I  took  a  good  ice,  told  my  beads, 
as  I  had  vowed,  and  went  home,  where  I  am  happiest  and  always  shall  be  happi- 
est." A  great  sorrow  came  to  him  here  in  the  death  of  his  mother.  Owing  to 
the  great  expense  of  living  in  Paris,  they  had  been  compelled  to  live  together  in 
a  small,  dark  room,  so  cramped  for  space  that  there  was  not  even  room  for  the 
indispensable  piano.  Here  she  was  taken  ill,  and  though  for  fourteen  days  Wolf- 
gang most  devotedly  attended  to  her  wants,  she  died  in  his  arms.  The  letters  in 
which  he  breaks  the  news  to  his  father  and  sister  are  full  of  the  most  beautiful 
tenderness  and  forgetfulness  of  his  own  grief  in  solicitude  for  theirs.  Things  did 
not  indeed  prosper  with  him  in  Paris  ;  he  tried  to  give  lessons,  but  the  ladies 
whom  he  taught  paid  him  very  shabbily,  and  the  labor  of  getting  from  one  part 
of  the  city  to  another  to  teach  was  so  great  that  he  found  it  difficult  to  give  the 
time  he  wished  to  composition. 

Music  in  Paris,  just  then,  was  at  a  low  ebb.  Vapidly  pretty  Italian  operas 
were  in  fashion,  and  Piccinni  was  the  favorite  composer.  It  was  some  years 
afterward  that  the  great  contest  between  the  Piccinnists  and  Gluckists  culmi- 
nated in  the  victory  of  the  latter,  though  "  Alceste,"  had  already  been  produced, 
and  "  Iphigenia  "  was  soon  to  follow.  Mozart  was  a  fervent  admirer  of  Gluck, 
and  the  music  of  the  older  master  had  evidently  an  important  influence  on  that 
of  the  younger  and  more  gifted  composer. 

Once  more  his  thoughts  were  turned  to  Salzburg,  for  two  of  the  leading 
musicians  there  having  died,  the  Archbishop  Hieronymus  offered  their  posts  to 
the  Mozarts,  father  and  son,  at  a  salary  of  a  thousand  florins  for  the  two.  The 
father  anxiously  entreated  his  son  to  return  and  accept  this  offer,  mentioning  as  a 
further  bait,  that  Aloysia  Weber  would  probably  be  engaged  to  sing  in  Salzburg. 
Much  as  Wolfgang  hated  Salzburg,  or  rather  the  people  living  there,  his  love  for 
his  father  and  sister  prevailed  over  his  aversion  ;  and  though  with  no  pleasure  at 
all  in  the  prospect  of  seeing  the  hateful  archbishop  again,  he  set  out  from  Paris, 
travelling  to  Salzburg  in  very  leisurely  fashion  via  Strasbourg,  Mannheim,  and 
Munich.  At  Strasbourg  he  was  induced  to  give  several  concerts,  but  they  were 
not  pecuniary  successes,  and  he  did  not  make  by  any  one  more  than  three  louis 
d'or.  But  how  the  artist  peeps  out  in  every  line  of  the  letters  in  which  he  de- 
scribes these  !  After  saying  how  few  were  present,  and  how  cold  it  was,  he  pro- 
ceeds :  "  But  I  soon  warmed  myself,  to  show  the  Strasbourg  gentlemen  how  little 
I  cared,  and  played  to  them  a  long  time  for  my  own  amusement,  giving  a  concerto 
more  than  I  had  promised,  and  at  the  close  extemporizing.  It  is  now  over,  but 
at  all  events  I  gained  honor  and  fame." 

At  Munich  a  great  shock  awaited  him.  He  visited  the  Webers,  and  being 
in  mourning  for  his  mother,  wore,  after  the  French  fashion,  a  red  coat  with 
black  buttons.  When  he  appeared,  Aloysia  hardly  seemed  to  recognize  him,  and 
her  coldness  was  so  marked,  that  Mozart  quietly  seated  himself  at  the  piano,  and 


312  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

sang  in  a  loud  voice,  "  Ich  lass  das  Madchen  gern  das  mich  nicht  will  "  (I  gladly 
give  up  the  girl  who  slights  me).  It  was  all  over,  and  he  had  to  hear  the  loss  of 
the  fickle  girl  as  best  he  might.  There  is  a  significant  line  in  one  of  his  letters  at 
this  time  to  his  father  :  "  In  my  whole  life  I  never  wrote  worse  than  I  do  to-day, 
but  I  really  am  unfit  for  anything;  my  heart  is  so  full  of  tears."  After  two  years' 
absence  he  returned  home  to  Salzburg,  where  he  was  warmly  welcomed  back. 
Here  he  remained  for  a  little  while,  and  wrote  his  first  serious  opera,  "  Idomeneo," 
to  the  text  of  an  Abbe  Varesco,  a  Salzburger.  This  opera  Beethoven  thought 
the  finest  of  all  that  Mozart  wrote.  It  was  brought  out  at  Munich  in  January, 
1 781,  and  was  brilliantly  successful.  In  the  March  following,  an  order  was  re- 
ceived from  the  archbishop  to  follow  him  to  Vienna,  where  he  wished  to  appear 
with  all  the  full  pomp  and  brilliant  retinue  of  a  prince  of  the  church  ;  and  as 
one  of  this  retinue  Mozart  had  to  follow  him,  little  thinking  at  the  time  that 
he  should  never  return  to  Salzburg,  but  that  Vienna  henceforth  was  to  be  his 
home. 

In  Vienna  he  found  that  he  had  to  live  in  the  archbishop's  house,  and  was 
looked  upon  there  as  one  of  the  ordinary  servants.  He  says,  "  We  dine  at  eleven 
o'clock  in  the  forenoon,  unluckily  rather  too  early  an  hour  for  me.  Our  party 
consists  of  the  two  valets,  the  comptroller,  Herr  Zetti,  the  confectioner,  the  two 
cooks,  Cecarilli,  Brunetti  (two  singers),  and  my  insignificant  self.  N.  B. — The 
two  valets  sit  at  the  head  of  the  table.  1  have,  at  all  events,  the  honor  to  be 
placed  above  the  cooks  ;  I  almost  believe  I  am  back  to  Salzburg." 

Mozart  was  a  true  gentleman,  with  no  foolish  false  pride,  but  with  the  hon- 
orable self-respect  that  every  gentleman  must  possess,  and  it  was  very  galling  to 
him  to  have  to  suffer  such  odious  treatment  from  the  mean-spirited  archbishop. 
Indeed,  it  was  only  for  his  father's  sake  that  he  submitted  to  the  continued 
contumely  and  petty  slights  to  which  the  archbishop  delighted  in  subjecting  him. 
At  last  the  open  rupture  came.  The  archbishop  called  him  a  knave  and  disso- 
lute fellow,  and  told  him  to  be  off  ;  and  when  Mozart  waited  upon  Count  Arco, 
the  principal  official,  to  obtain  the  regular  dismissal  that  was  necessary,  the  fellow 
poured  abuse  upon  him,  and  actually  kicked  him  out  of  the  room.  Poor  Mozart 
was  in  a  state  of  violent  excitement  after  this  outrage,  and  for  some  days  was  so 
ill  that  he  could  not  continue  his  ordinary  work.  But  now  at  least  he  was  free, 
and  though  his  father,  like  a  timid,  prudent  old  man,  bewailed  the  loss  of  the 
stipend  which  his  son  had  been  receiving,  Mozart  himself  knew  that  the  release 
was  entirely  for  the  best. 

In  1782  appeared  "  Die  Entfiihrung  aus  dem  Serail,"  his  first  really  important 
opera,  full  of  beautiful  airs,  which  at  once  became  enormously  popular  with  the 
Viennese.  The  Emperor  Joseph  II.  knew  very  little  about  music,  but,  as  fre- 
quently happens  in  such  cases,  considered  that  he  possessed  prodigious  taste.  On 
hearing  it  he  said,  "  Much  too  fine  for  our  cars,  dear  Mozart ;  and  what  a  quantity 
of  notes ! " 

The  bold  reply  to  this  was,  "Just  as  many  notes  as  are  necessary,  your  Ma- 
jesty." 


MOZART  313 

Much  of  the  delight  which  Mozart  felt  in  the  success  of  the  opera  arose  from 
the  fact  that  it  enabled  him  seriously  to  contemplate  marriage.  Aloysia  Weber 
had  been  faithless  to  him,  but  there  was  another  sister — with  no  special  beauty 
save  that  of  bright  eyes,  a  comely  figure,  and  a  cheerful,  amiable  disposition — 
Constanze,  whom  he  now  hoped  to  make  his  wife.  His  father  objected  to  all  of 
the  Weber  family,  and  there  was  some  difficulty  in  obtaining  the  paternal  consent ; 
but  at  last  the  marriage  took  place,  on  August  4,  i  782.  How  truly  he  loved  his 
wife  from  first  to  last,  his  letters  abundantly  show  ;  her  frequent  illnesses  were 
afterward  a  great  and  almost  constant  source  of  expense  to  him,  but  he  never 
ceased  to  write  to  her  with  the  passionate  ardor  of  a  young  lover.  He  says  :  "  I 
found  that  I  never  prayed  so  fervently,  or  confessed  so  piously,  as  by  her  side  ; 
she  felt  the  same."  And  now  for  some  time  everything  went  smoothlv  in  the 
modest  little  menage  in  Vienna.  Mozart  had  plenty  of  lessons  to  give,  but  none 
of  the  commissions  for  operas  which  he  would  have  wished. 

Passing  over  a  visit  to  Leipsic — where  he  studied  with  the  keenest  delight  a 
number  of  the  unpublished  works  of  the  great  Sebastian  Bach — and  to  Berlin,  he 
returned  to  Vienna,  and  at  once  set  to  work  upon  some  quartets  which  the  King  of 
Prussia  had  ordered  from  him.  "  Cosi  fan  tutte,"  a  comic  opera,  with  the  beauti- 
fully flowing  music  that  only  Mozart  could  write,  but  with  a  stupid  plot  that  has 
prevented  its  frequent  repetition  in  later  times  ;  and  the  glorious  "  Zauberflote," 
written  to  assist  a  theatrical  manager,  Schikaneder,  were  his  next  works.  At  this 
time  a  strange  melancholy  began  to  show  itself  in  his  letters — it  may  be  that  al- 
ready his  overwrought  brain  was  conscious  that  the  end  was  not  far  distant.  Such 
lines  as  these,  pathetic  and  sad  in  their  simple  and  almost  childlike  expression, 
occur  in  a  letter  he  wrote  during  a  short  absence  from  his  wife,  at  Frankfort,  in 
1790  :  "  I  am  as  happy  as  a  child  at  the  thought  of  returning  to  you.  If  people 
could  see  into  my  heart  I  should  almost  feel  ashamed — all  there  is  cold,  cold  as  ice. 
Were  you  with  me,  I  should  possibly  take  more  pleasure  in  the  kindness  of  those  I 
meet  here,  but  all  seems  to  me  so  empty."  On  his  return  to  Vienna  pecuniary 
want  was  rather  pressingly  felt  ;  his  silver  plate  had  to  be  pawned,  and  a  perfidious 
friend,  Stadler,  made  away  with  the  tickets,  and  the  silver  was  never  redeemed. 
On  one  occasion  Joseph  Deiner,  the  landlord  of  the  "  Silberne  Schlange,"  chanced 
to  call  upon  him,  and  was  surprised  to  find  Mozart  and  his  wife  Constanze  danc- 
ing round  the  room.  The  laughing  explanation  was  that  they  had  no  firewood 
in  the  house,  and  so  were  trying  to  warm  themselves  with  dancing.  Deiner  at 
once  offered  to  send  in  firewood,  Mozart  promising  to  pay  as  soon  as  he  could. 

That  grand  work,  the  "Zauberflote,"  had  just  been  completed  when  a  strange 
commission  was  given  him.  One  day  a  tall,  haggard-looking  man,  dressed  in 
gray,  with  a  very  sombre  expression  of  countenance,  called  upon  Mozart,  bring- 
ing with  him  an  anonymous  letter.  This  letter  contained  an  inquiry  as  to  the 
sum  for  which  he  would  write  a  mass  for  the  dead,  and  in  how  short  a  time  this 
could  be  completed.  Mozart  consulted  his  wife,  and  the  sum  of  fifty  ducats  was 
mentioned.  The  stranger  departed,  and  soon  returned  with  the  money,  promis- 
ing Mozart  a  further  sum  on  completion,  and  also  mentioned  that  he  might  a? 


314  ARIISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

well  spare  the  trouble  of  finding  out  who  had  given  this  commission,  for  it 
would  be  entirely  useless.  We  now  know  that  the  commission  had  really  been 
given  by  Count  Walscgg,  a  foolish  nol)lcman,  whose  wife  had  died,  and  who 
wanted,  by  transcribing  Mozart's  score,  to  pass  it  off  as  his  own  composition — 
and  this  he  actually  did  after  the  composer's  death.  Poor  Mozart,  in  the  weak 
state  of  health  in  which  he  now  was,  with  nerves  unstrung  and  over-excited  brain, 
was  Strangel\-  impressed  by  this  visit,  and  soon  the  fancy  took  firm  possession  of 
him  that  the  messenger  had  arrived  with  a  mandate  from  the  unseen  world,  and 
that  the  "  Requiem  "  he  was  to  write  was  for  himself.  Not  the  less  did  he  ar- 
dently set  to  work  on  it.  Hardly,  however,  was  it  commenced  than  he  was  com- 
l)elled  to  write  another  opera,  "  La  Clemenza  di  Tito,"  for  which  a  commission 
had  been  given  him  by  the  Bohemian  Estates,  for  production  on  the  occasion  of 
the  Emperor  Leopold's  coronation  in  their  capital.  This  was  accomplished  in 
the  short  space  of  eighteen  days,  and  though  it  does  not  contain  the  best  music, 
yet  the  overture  and  several  of  the  numbers  are  full  of  a  piquant  beauty  and  live- 
liness well  suiting  the  festival  of  a  people's  rejoicing.  But  a  far  greater  work, 
the  "  Zauberflote,"  was  produced  in  Vienna  shortly  afterward.  It  did  not  take 
very  well  at  first,  but  subsequent  performances  went  better. 

His  labors  in  bringing  out  the  "  ZauberHote  "  over,  Mozart  returned  to  the 
"  Requiem  "  he  had  already  commenced,  but  while  writing  he  often  had  to  sink 
back  in  his  chair,  being  seized  with  short  swoons.  Too  plainly  was  his  strength 
exhausted,  but  he  persisted  in  his  solemn  work.  One  bright  November  morning 
he  was  walking  with  Constanze  in  the  Prater,  and  sadly  pointing  out  to  her  the 
falling  leaves,  and  speaking  of  death,  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  he  added,  "  I  well 
know  I  am  writing  this  '  Requiem '  for  myself.  My  own  feelings  tell  me  that 
I  shall  not  last  long.  No  doubt  some  one  has  given  me  poison — I  cannot  get 
rid  of  this  thought."  With  these  gloomy  fancies  haunting  his  mind,  he  rapidly 
grew  worse,  and  soon  could  not  leave  his  room.  The  performances  of  the  "  Zau- 
berflote "  were  still  going  on,  and  extraordinarily  successful.  He  took  the  great- 
est interest  in  hearing  of  them,  and  at  night  would  take  out  his  watch  and  note 
the  time — "  Now  the  first  act  is  over,  now  is  the  time  for  the  great  Queen  of 
Night."  The  day  before  his  death  he  said  to  his  wife,  "Oh,  that  I  could  only 
once  more  hear  my  "  Flauto  Magico!"  humming,  in  scarcely  audible  voice,  the 
lively  bird-catcher  song.  The  same  day,  at  two  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  he  called 
his  friends  together,  and  asked  for  the  score  of  his  nearly  completed  "  Requiem  " 
to  be  laid  on  his  bed.  Benedict  Schack  sang  the  soprano  ;  his  brother-in-law, 
Hofer,  the  tenor;  Gerl,  the  bass  ;  and  Mozart  himself  took  the  alto  in  a  weak 
but  delicately  clear  voice.  They  had  got  through  the  various  parts  till  they  came 
to  the  "  Lacrymosa,"  when  Mozart  burst  into  tears,  and  laid  the  score  aside. 
The  next  day  (Sunday),  he  was  worse,  and  said  to  Sophie,  his  sister-in-law,  "  1 
have  the  taste  of  death  on  my  tongue,  I  smell  the  grave,  and  who  can  comfort 
my  Constanze,  if  you  don't  stay  here  ?"  In  her  account  of  his  last  moments,  she 
says  :  "  I  found  Sussmayer  sitting  by  Mozart's  bed.  The  well-known  '  Requi- 
em' was  lying  on  the  coverlet,  and  Mozart  was  explaining  to  Sussmayer  the 


•1-  r  1  y  >|  •  t 

u)  had   given  this   coi 
>  that  the  commission  nau  icaii;   i  Lcn 
1       I'^man,  whose  wife   had   died,  and  who 
-s  it  off  as  his  mposition — 

.  omposer  s  death.      Poor  '  ^  lie  weak 

was,  with  nerves  unstrung  ani  '  '  ■     n. 

I  .  >  visit,  and  soon  the  fancy  tool  l 

had  arrived  with  a  mandate  from  the  unsci  i 
!     he  was  to  write  \v;is  for  himself.     Not  the  1< 
.11  it.     Hardly,  however,  was  it  commenced  than  in. 
•her  opera,  "  La  CHc  ;ncn;ra  di  Tito,"  for  wliic'i'.  a  cop. 

I  he  Bohemian  lion  on  the  occasion  • 

ilif  )pold's  coronation    i  r  capital,      fhis  was  accomphshed  m 

i  if  eighteen  days,  and  luough  it  does  not  contain  the  best  niasic, 

,ind   ■  \-.-i-ril  of  the  nitmhors  arc  full  of  a  piquant  beautv  and  li'  c- 

iiut  a  far  greater  w  > 
1  ward.     It  did  not  take 


\'Ci\ 


T       .1- 


had  to  sink 


.lid  speaking  of  dcaih     ^^ 
kno.  eajaiHa  .w  samoht  .^.ij  „,e  that 

Lii'Li-.i     ."ui    «.  "   Mil..  J7W,  v^M ---1  cannot  get 

■Ai  thcbc  gloom  .anting  his  mind,  he  rapidly 

and  soon  could  not  leave  his  room.     The  performances  of  the  "  Zau- 

wcrc  still  goi'i  'ily  successful.      He  took  the  great- 

1     in    !-       ■•'■"  n, ;_;>..     .       "^  '    '    ^-'    OUt    his    Watch   ■.'■^''    'V'r 

.  now   '  for  the  jnent  ' 

The  «'  -  said  t. 


other-in-law. 


•r-in-law,  '  1 
can  comf<j!t 
loments,  she 
own  '  Requi- 
crlet,  and  Mozart  wa-^  •  Siissmayer  the 


HAYDN 


315 


mode  in  which  he  wished  him  to  complete  it  after  his  death.  He  further  re- 
quested his  wife  to  keep  his  death  secret  until  she  had  informed  Albrechtsberger 
of  it,  '  for  the  situation  of  assistant  organist  at  the  Stephen  Church  ought  to  be 
his  before  God  and  the  world.'  The  doctor  came  and  ordered  cold  applications 
on  Mozart's  burning  head.  .  .  .  The  last  movement  of  his  lips  was  an  en- 
deavor to  indicate  where  the  kettledrums  should  be  used  in  the  '  Requiem.'  I 
think  I  still  hear  the  sound." 


HAYDN 

By  C.  E.  Bourne 


(l  732-1  809) 


"v  TO  composer  has  ever  given  greater  or  purer 


pleasure  by  his  compositions  than  is  given 
by  "papa"  Haydn;  there  is  an  unceasing  flow 
of  cheerfulness  and  lively  tone  in  his  music ; 
even  in  the  most  solemn  pieces,  as  in  his  Masses, 
the  predominant  feeling  is  that  of  gladness  ;  as 
he  once  said  to  Carpani :  "At  the  thought  of 
God  my  heart  leaps  for  joy,  and  I  cannot  help 
my  music  doing  the  same."  But  it  is  not  alone 
as  the  writer  of  graceful  and  beautiful  music  that 
Haydn  has  a  claim  on  our  remembrance  ;  he  has 
been  truly  called  the  "father  of  the  symphony." 
Mozart  once  said  :  "  It  was  from  Haydn  that  I 
first  learned  the  true  way  to  compose  quar- 
tettes; "  and  "The  Creation,"  which  must  ever 
be  counted  one  of  the  masterpieces  of  oratorio 
music,  was  his  work. 
His  family  were  of  the  people,  his  father  being  a  master  wheelwright  at 
Rohrau,  a  small  Austrian  village  on  the  borders  of  Lower  Austria  and  Hungary  ; 
and  his  mother  having  been  employed  as  a  cook  in  the  castle  of  Count  Harrach, 
the  principal  lord  of  the  district.  Joseph  Haydn  was  born  on  March  31,  1732, 
the  second  child  of  his  parents  ;  and  as  ten  brothers  and'  sisters  afterward  came 
into  the  world,  it  can  easily  be  understood  that  his  lot  was  not  a  very  luxurious 
one.  His  parents  were  simple,  honest  people  of  the  laboring  class,  very  ignorant, 
but,  like  most  German  peasants,  with  a  certain  love  for  and  facility  in  music,  not 
quite  so  common  in  this  country.  Haydn's  father  had  a  good  voice,  and  could 
sing  well,  accompanying  himself  on  the  harp,  though  he  did  not  know  a  single 
note  of  written  music.  Then  there  was  the  village  schoolmaster,  who  could  actu- 
ally play  the  violin,  and  whom  little  Joseph  watched  with  wondering  eyes,  ex- 


31G  ARTISTS   AND    AL'TIIORS 

tiactina^  those  marvellously  sweet  sounds  from  his  wooden  instrument,  until,  with 
the  child's  spirit  of  imitation,  as  his  parents  sang  their  "  Volkslieder,"  the  little 
fellow,  perched  on  a  stone  bench,  gravely  handled  two  pieces  of  wood  of  his 
own  as  if  they  were  bow  and  fiddle,  keeping  exact  time,  and  flourishing  the  bow 
in  the  approved  fashion  of  the  schoolmaster.  From  this  very  little  incident  came 
an  important  change  in  his  life;  for  a  relation,  Johann  Mathias  Frankh,  of  Hain- 
burg,  happened  to  be  present  on  one  occasion,  and,  thinking  he  saw  an  aptitude 
for  music  in  the  boy,  offered  to  take  him  into  his  own  school  at  Hainburg,  where 
accordingly  young  Haydn  went  at  the  age  of  six  years. 

There  he  remained  for  two  years,  making  rapid  progress  in  singing  and  in 
playing  all  sorts  of  instruments,  among  others  the  clavier,  violin,  organ,  and 
drum.  He  said  afterward,  with  the  unaffected  piety,  far  removed  from  cant, 
that  was  characteristic  of  him  :  "  Almighty  God,  to  whom  I  render  thanks  for  all 
his  unnumbered  mercies,  gave  me  such  facility  in  music  that,  by  the  time  I  was 
six  years  old,  1  stood  up  like  a  man  and  sang  masses  in  the  church  choir,  and 
could  play  a  little  on  the  clavier  and  violin."  Of  Frankh,  a  very  strict,  but  thor- 
ough and  most  painstaking  teacher,  he  also  said  afterward  :  "  I  shall  be  grateful 
to  that  man  as  long  as  I  live  for  keeping  me  so  hard  at  work,  though  I  used  to 
get  more  flogging  than  food  ; "  and  in  Haydn's  will  he  remembered  Frankh's 
family,  leaving  his  daughter  a  sum  of  money  and  a  portrait  of  Frankh  himself, 
"  my  first  instructor  in  music." 

For  some  years  he  seems  to  have  lived  a  miserable,  struggling  life,  giving  les- 
sons, playing  the  organ  in  churches,  and  studying  when  and  where  he  could. 
He  had  a  few  pupils  at  the  moderate  remuneration  of  two  florins  a  month,  and 
he  had  contrived  to  obtain  possession  of  an  old  worm-eaten  clavier,  on  which  he 
used  diligently  to  practise  in  the  garret  in  the  Kohlmarkt,  where  he  lived.  A 
pitiable  description  is  given  of  the  lodging  he  then  occupied.  It  was  on  the 
sixth  story,  in  a  room  without  stove  or  window.  In  winter  his  breath  froze  on 
his  thin  coverlet,  and  the  water,  that  in  the  morning  he  had  to  fetch  himself  from 
the  spring  for  washing,  was  frequently  changed  into  a  lump  of  ice  before  his 
arrival  in  that  elevated  region.  Life  was  indeed  hard ;  but  he  was  constantly  at 
work,  and,  haying  made  a  precious  "  find  "  on  an  old  bookstall  one  day  of  Fux's 
"  Gradus  ad  Parnassum,"  in  a  very  dilapidated  condition,  but  very  cheap,  he  was 
ardently  preparing  himself  for  the  life — he  now  vowed  should  be  his — of  a  com- 
poser. 

About  this  time  Haydn  received  a  commission  from  Felix  Kurz,  a  comic 
actor  of  the  Stadt-Theatre,  to  put  a  farce  of  his,  "  Der  neue  krumme  Teufel,"  to 
music.  This  farce,  of  which  the  words  still  remain,  though  the  music  has  been 
lost,  was  very  successful,  and  was  played  in  Vienna,  Prague,  Berlin,  and  a  num- 
ber of  other  towns.  The  well-known  story  of  Haydn's  "Tempest  Music  "  is  con- 
nected with  this.  In  one  part  of  this  piece  a  terrible  storm  was  supposed  to  be 
raging,  and  the  accompanying  music  must  of  course  be  suitably  descriptive  ;  but 
the  difficulty  was  that  Haydn  had  never  seen  the  sea  :  therefore  had  not  the 
slightest  notion   of  what  a  storm  at  sea  was  like.      Kurz  tries  to  describe  the 


HAYDN  317 

waves  running  mountains  high,  the  pitching  and  tossing,  the  roll  of  thunder,  and 
the  howling  of  the  wind ;  and  Haydn  produces  all  sorts  of  ugly,  jerky,  and  noisy 
music,  but  none  of  it  is  in  the  remotest  degree  like  a  storm  at  sea,  or  anywhere 
else.  At  last,  after  Kurz  had  become  hoarse  with  his  nautical  disquisitions,  and 
Haydn's  fingers  were  tired  of  scrambling  all  over  the  piano,  the  little  musician  in 
a  rage  crashed  his  hands  down  on  the  two  extremes  of  the  instrument,  exclaim- 
ing :  "  Let's  have  done  with  this  tempest  !  " 

"  Why,  that's  it ;  that's  the  ver}-  thing  ! "  shouted  the  clown,  jumping  up  and 
embracing  him  ;  and  with  this  crash  and  a  run  of  semitones  to  the  centre  of  the 
piano  this  troublesome  tempest  was  most  satisfactorily  represented. 

When,  many  years  afterward,  Haydn  was  crossing  the  Straits  of  Dover  to 
England,  amid  his  sufferings  he  could  not  help  laughing  at  the  ludicrous  recol- 
lections of  this  early  experience  of  his. 

Things  still  went  on  improving,  and  Haydn,  who  was  always  lucky  in  the 
patrons  he  secured  (at  least  according  to  the  notion  about  patrons  that  then  pre- 
vailed), was  invited  to  the  country-house  of  Herr  von  Fiirnberg,  a  wealthy  ama- 
teur, to  stay  there  and  compose  quartettes  for  him — a  style  of  music  for  which  von 
Ftirnberg  had  an  especial  liking.  To  his  prompting  it  is  that  we  owe  the  lovely 
series  of  quartettes  which  Haydn  wrote — still  as  fresh  and  full  of  serene  beauty  as 
when  first  tried  over  by  the  virtuosi  of  VVeinzirl.  The  next  piece  of  good  fortune 
was  Haydn's  appointment  as  director  of  the  band  and  composer  to  Count  Fer- 
dinand Morzin  at  Lukaver  near  Pilsen  ;  and  here,  in  i  759,  his  first  symphony  was 
written.  His  salary  was  very  small,  only  200  florins  a  year  (or  /^2o),  with  board 
and  lodgings  ;  but  on  the  strength  of  it  he  unfortunately  determined  on  the  seri- 
ous step  of  embarking  in  matrimony.  A  barber,  named  Keller,  is  said  to  have 
been  very  kind  to  him  in  the  days  of  his  poverty,  and  out  of  gratitude  Haydn 
gave  music-lessons  to  his  daughters.  One  of  them,  the  youngest,  was  very  prett\-, 
and  Haydn  fell  in  love  with  her.  But  she  became  a  nun  ;  and  the  father  then  pre- 
vailed upon  Haydn  to  marry  the  elder  one,  who  was  three  years  older  than  he — 
a  sour-tempered,  bigoted,  and  abominably  selfish  woman,  who  contributed  little 
to  the  happiness  of  his  life,  and  was  always  bringing  priests  and  friars  to  the 
house  and  worrying  her  good-tempered  husband  to  compose  masses  and  other 
church  music  for  these  men. 

Count  Morzin  was  compelled  to  give  up  his  band  in  1761  ;  but  Haydn  did 
not  remain  long  without  employment,  as  Prince  Esterhazy,  who  had  heard  his 
symphonies  at  Morzin's  house,  engaged  him  to  assist  Werner,  his  Capellmeister. 
As  director  of  Prince  Esterhazy's  band,  Haydn  was  fated  to  remain  for  many 
years  living  at  Esterhaz,  the  prince's  countrv-seat,  composing  there  nearly  all  his 
0])eras  and  songs,  and  many  of  his  symphonies. 

In  1785  Haydn  received  a  commission  which  showed  the  wide  reputation  he 
had  then  gained.  The  Chapter  of  Cadiz  Cathedral  requested  him  to  write  some 
instrumental  music  for  performance  on  Good  Friday.  "The  Seven  Words  of 
our  Saviour  on  the  Cross  "  was  in  conse(iuence  written  by  him. 

Several  invitations  had   been  sent  from   England  for  Haydn  to  pay  a  visit 


318  ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 

there  ;  but  it  was  onlv  after  Prince  Esterliazy  was  dead  that  he  was  prevailed  on 
by  Salomon  to  cross  the  sea.  A  characteristic  conversation  between  him  and 
Mozart — which  took  place  before  he  undertook  this,  in  those  days,  really  formi- 
dable journey — is  recorded. 

"  Papa,"  said  Mozart.  "  you  have  no  training  for  the  great  world,  and  you 
speak  too  few  languages." 

Haydn  replied  :  "  My  language  is  understood  by  all  the  world." 

He  set  out  on  December  15,  1790,  and  did  not  return  to  Vienna  till  July, 
1792.  In  London,  where  he  wrote  and  conducted  a  number  of  symphonies  for 
Salomon,  he  was  the  "  lion  "  of  the  season,  being  in  constant  request  for  con- 
ducting concerts  and  paying  visits  to  the  nobility.  Of  these  symphonies  Salo- 
mon once  said  to  him  :  "  I  am  strongly  of  opinion  that  you  never  will  surpass 
this  music." 

"  I  never  mean  to  try,"  was  the  answer. 

But  this  must  not  be  taken  to  mean  that  Haydn  had  given  up  striving  after 
the  truest  perfection  in  his  art,  and  it  probably  meant  no  more  than  that  for  the 
time  he  was  satisfied  with  his  work.  Far  more  like  the  genuine  expression  of 
the  feeling  of  the  great  artist  was  his  utterance,  just  before  he  died,  to  Kalk- 
brenner  :  "  I  have  only  just  learned  in  my  old  age  how  to  use  the  wind-instru- 
ments;  and  now  that  I  do  understand  them,  I  must  leave  the  world." 

Great  as  the  work  accomplished  in  his  youth  and  early  manhood  unquestion- 
ably was,  it  remained  for  his  old  age  to  accomplish  his  greatest  work,  and  that  by 
which  he  is  best  known — the  oratorio  of  "The  Creation."  It  is  said  that  the  first 
ideas  for  this  came  to  him  when,  in  crossing  the  English  Channel,  he  encountered 
a  terrific  storm.  Soon  after  his  leaving  London,  where  the  words  had  been  given 
him  by  Salomon,  Haydn  set  about  composing  the  music.  "  Never,"  he  says, 
"was  I  so  pious  as  when  composing  'The  Creation.'  I  knelt  down  every 
day  and  prayed  God  to  strengthen  me  for  my  work."  It  was  first  produced  on 
March  31,  1799,  his  67th  birthday,  at  the  National  Theatre,  Vienna,  and  was  at 
once  accorded  an  extraordinary  share  of  popular  favor.  There  is  a  pathetic  story 
of  the  last  performance  of  the  work,  at  which  Haydn,  in  extreme  old  age,  in 
1808,  was  present,  when  Salieri  conducted.  He  was  carried  in  an  arm-chair  into 
the  hall,  and  received  there  with  the  warmest  greeting  by  the  audience.  At  the 
sublime  passage,  "  And  there  was  light !  "  Haydn,  quite  overcome,  raised  his 
hand,  pointing  upward  and  saying,  "  It  came  from  thence."  Soon  after  this  his 
asfitation  increased  so  much  that  it  was  thought  better  to  take  him  home  at  the 
end  of  the  first  part.  The  people  crowded  round  him  to  take  leave,  and  Beetho- 
ven is  said  to  have  reverently  kissed  his  hand  and  forehead.  After  composing 
"The  Creation,"  Haydn  was  prevailed  upon  to  write  another  work,  of  somewhat 
similar  character,  to  words  adapted  from  Thomson's  poem,  and  entitled  "  The 
Seasons."  This,  though  containing  some  fine  descriptive  music  and  several 
choruses  of  great  beauty,  is  not  at  all  equal  to  the  earlier  work,  though  at  the 
time  its  success  was  quite  as  complete.  But  the  exertion  of  writing  two  such 
great  works,  almost  without  rest  between  them,  was  too  great,  and   he  himself 


z 
o 

H 
< 
ui 
oc 
o 


en 

I 

o 

z 

05 

o 

0. 

o 
o 

z 

Q 

> 
< 

I 


BEETHOVEN 


319 


said  :  "  '  The  Seasons  '  gave  me  the  finishing  stroke."  The  bombardment  of 
Vienna  by  the  French  in  1809  greatly  disturbed  the  poor  old  man.  He  still  re- 
tained some  of  his  old  humor,  and  during  the  thunder  of  the  cannons  called  out 
to  his  servants  :  "  Children,  don't  be  frightened  ;  no  harm  can  happen  to  you 
while  Haydn  is  by  !"  He  was  now  no  longer  able  to  compose,  and  to  his  last 
unfinished  quartette  he  added  a  few  bars  of  "  Der  Greis,"  as  a  conclusion  : 

"  Hill  ist  alle  meine  Kraft : 
Alt  unci  schwach  bin  ich. 

— Joseph  Haydn." 

"  Gone  is  all  m}^  strength  :  old  and  weak  am  I."  And  these  lines  he  caused  to  be 
engraved,  and  sent  on  a  card  to  the  friends  who  visited  him.  The  end  was  in- 
deed now  near.  On  May  26,  1809,  he  had  his'servants  gathered  round  him  for 
the  last  adieus ;  then,  by  his  desire,  he  was  carried  to  the  piano,  where  he  played 
three  times  over  the  "  Emperor's  Hymn,"  composed  by  him.  Then  he  was 
taken  to  his  bed,  where  five  days  afterward  he  died. 


BEETHOVEN 

By  C.  E.  Bourne 
(1770-1827) 

IN  one  of  his  letters  to  Frau  von  Streicher,  at 
Baden,  Beethoven  writes  :  "  When  you  visit 
the  ancient  ruins,  do  not  forget  that  Beethoven  has 
often  lingered  there  ;  when  you  stray  through  the 
silent  pine-forests,  do  not  forget  that  Beethoven 
often  wrote  poetry  there,  or,  as  it  is  termed,  com- 
posed." He  was  always  fond  of  claiming  the  title 
"Ton-dichter,  poet  in  music;"  and  surely  of  all 
the  great  geniuses  who  have  walked  the  earth,  to 
none  can  the  glorious  name  of  "  poet "  more  truly 
be  given  than  to  Ludwig  von  Beethoven. 

He  was  born  at  Bonn,  on  December  17,  1770. 
His  father,  Johann  von  Beethoven,  was  a  tenor 
singer  in  the  Electoral  Chapel  of  the  Archbishop 
of  Cologne,  at  Bonn,  and  his  mother,  Maria  Mag- 
dalena,  was  a  daughter  of  the  iicad  cook  at  the  castle  of  Ehrenbreitstein.  The 
Beethoven  family  originally  came  from  Louvain,  in  Belgium  ;  but  the  composer's 
grandfather  had  settled  in  Bonn,  first  as  a  singer,  and  afterward  as  Capellmeister 
to  the  court.     Musicians  were  not  held  of  much  account  in  those  days,  and  the 


320  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

maniao:e  of  a  sinsfer  with  the  dauorhter  of  a  cook  was  not  at  all  considered  a  m(!s- 
alliance.  Johann  was  a  sad  drunken  scapegrace,  and  his  poor  wife,  in  bringing 
up  her  family  upon  the  small  portion  of  his  earnings  which  she  could  save  from 
being  squandered  at  the  tavern,  had  a  pitiably  hard  and  long  struggling  life  of  it. 

Johann  soon  discovered  the  extraordinary  musical  endowments  of  his  child 
and  at  once  set  to  work  to  make  a  "  prodigy  "  of  him,  as  Handel,  Bach,  and  Mo- 
zart had  been  before  ;  for  in  this  way  the  father  hoped  to  secure  a  mine  of  wealth 
and  lazy  competence  for  himself.  So  the  boy,  when  only  a  few  years  old,  was 
kept  for  long  weary  hours  practising  the  piano,  and  one  of  the  earliest  stories  of 
his  life  is  of  the  five-year-old  little  child  made  to  stand  on  a  bench  before  the 
piano  laboring  over  the  notes,  while  the  tears  flowed  fast  down  his  cheeks  at  the 
cold  and  aching  pain,  from  which  his  hard  taskmaster  would  not  release  him. 
Besides  his  father,  a  clever  musician  who  lodged  in  the  house,  Pfeiffer,  an  oboist 
at  the  theatre,  gave  him  lessons.  Beethoven  used  afterward  to  say  that  he  had 
learnt  more  from  this  Pfeiffer  than  from  any  one  else  ;  but  he  was  too  ready  to 
abet  the  father  in  his  tyranny,  and  many  a  time,  when  the  two  came  reeling 
home  late  at  night  from  drinking  bouts  at  the  tavern,  they  would  arouse  the  little 
fellow  from  his  sleep  and  set  him  to  work  at  the  piano  till  daybreak. 

His  next  instructor  was  Neefe,  the  organist  of  the  Archbishop's  private  chapel, 
a  really  skilful  and  learned  musician,  who  predicted  that  the  boy  would  become  a 
second  Mozart.  Under  him  Beethoven  studied  for  several  years,  and  in  1782, 
when  he  was  hardly  twelve  years  old,  we  find  him  acting  as  organist  in  Neefe's 
place  during  the  absence  of  the  latter  on  a  journey.  The  next  year  three  sonatas 
composed  by  young  Beethoven,  and  dedicated  to  the  Elector  in  fulsome  language, 
which  was  probably  his  father's  production,  were  printed.  Soon  afterward  the 
boy  obtained  the  appointment  of  assistant-organist  to  the  Elector,  with  a  salary  of 
a  hundred  thalers,  no  inconsiderable  addition  to  the  resources  of  his  poor  mother, 
who,  with  her  family  of  three  children,  Ludwig,  Carl,  and  Johann,  and  the  more 
and  more  frequent  visits  of  her  ne'er-do-well  of  a  husband  to  the  tavern,  was  often 
grievously  hard  put  to  it  for  money.  Young  Ludwig  had  little  play  time  in  his 
life,  and  little  opportunity  for  education  ;  but  amid  his  hard  work  some  indications 
of  a  mischievous  boyish  spirit  are  to  be  found. 

In  the  year  1791,  the  Elector,  as  head  of  the  Teutonic  Order,  had  to  be  pres- 
ent at  a  grand  conclave  at  Mergentheim,  and  thither  he  resolved  to  take  his 
musical  and  theatrical  staff.  Two  ships  were  chartered  to  convey  these  gentle- 
men down  the  Rhine  and  Maine,  and  a  very  pleasant  excursion,  with  all  sorts  of 
frolics  and  high  revellings,  they  had  of  it.  Lux,  a  celebrated  actor,  was  chosen 
king  of  the  expedition,  and  we  find  Beethoven  figuring  among  the  scullions. 

In  the  autumn  of  the  year  following,  a  visit  was  paid  by  Haydn  to  Bonn  on 
his  return  from  his  second  journey  to  London.  The  musicians  of  the  town  gave 
a  breakfast  at  Godesberg  in  his  honor,  and  here  Beethoven  summoned  up  cour- 
age to  show  the  veteran  musician  a  cantata  which  he  had  recently  composed. 
This  was  warmly  praised  by  Haydn,  and  probably  about  this  time  arrangements 
were  made  for  Beethoven  to  be  received  as  a  pupil  by  the  older  master.      It  is 


BEETHOVEN  321 

in  this  period  that  we  must  place  a  well-known  anecdote.  The  young  mu- 
sician, already  famous  in  his  own  neighborhood,  was  composing,  as  his  custom 
was,  in  the  wood  outside  the  city,  when  a  funeral  cortege  passed  him.  The 
priest,  seeing  him,  instantly  checked  the  dirge  which  was  being  chanted,  and  the 
procession  passed  in  solemn  silence,  "for  fear  of  disturbing  him."  In  the  be- 
ginning of  November,  1792,  the  young  musician  left  Bonn  for  Vienna,  and,  as  it 
happened,  he  never  afterward  returned  to  the  familiar  scenes  of  his  birthplace. 

Beethoven  was  never  a  very  easy  man  to  get  on  with,  and  his  intercourse  with 
Haydn,  who  used  to  call  him  the  "Great  Mogul,"  does  not  seem  to  have  been 
the  most  friendlv.  He  was  dissatisfied  with  the  instruction  o-iven  him,  and  sus- 
picions  were  awakened  in  his  mind  that  the  elder  musician  was  jealous  of  him, 
and  did  not  wish  him  to  improve.  These  thoughts  were  strengthened  by  the  re- 
sult of  a  chance  meeting  one  day,  as  he  was  walking  home  with  his  portfolio 
under  his  arm,  with  Johann  Schenk,  a  scientific  and  thoroughly  accomplished 
musician.  Beethoven  complained  to  him  of  the  little  advance  he  was  making 
in  counterpoint,  and  that  Haydn  never  corrected  his  exercises  or  taught  him 
anything.  Schenk  asked  to  look  through  the  portfolio,  and  see  the  last  work 
that  Haydn  had  revised,  and  on  examining  it  he  was  astonished  to  find  a  number 
of  mistakes  that  had  not  been  pointed  out.  It  is  difficult  to  understand  Haydn's 
conduct  in  this  matter,  for  the  perfidious  treatment  suspected  by  Beethoven  is 
quite  at  variance  with  the  ordinarily  accepted  character  of  the  old  man,  and  I 
cannot  help  fancying  that  the  only  foundation  for  Beethoven's  suspicion  was 
that  Haydn  did  not  quite  understand  the  erratic  genius  of  the  youth  till  some 
time  afterward.  Beethoven  dedicated  his  three  pianoforte  sonatas.  Op.  II.,  to 
Haydn,  and  when  the  latter  suggested  that  he  should  add  on  the  title  page 
"Pupil  of  Haydn,"  the  "Great  Mogul"  refused,  bluntly  saying  "that  he  had 
never  learnt  anything  from  him."  After  Haydn,  Albrechtsberger  and  Salieri 
were  for  a  time  his  teachers,  but  Beethoven  got  on  no  better  with  them,  and  Al- 
brechtsberger said,  "  Have  nothing  to  do  with  him  ;  he  has  learnt  nothing,  and 
will  never  do  anything  in  decent  style."  Perhaps  not  in  vour  pedant's  style,  O 
great  contrapuntist ! 

Beethoven  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  unfortunate  in  his  friends.  He  had 
man\-  true  and  faithful  ones  throughout  his  life,  and  though  he  suffered  from  pe- 
cuniary troubles,  caused  by  the  conduct  of  his  brothers,  he  was  never  in  such  a 
state  of  grinding  poverty  as  some  other  artists,  such  as  Schubert,  have  been — 
never  compelled  to  waste  precious  years  of  his  life  in  producing  "pot-boilers  " — ■ 
working  not  for  art  so  much  as  for  mere  food  and  shelter.  In  1794  Prince  Karl 
Lichnowski,  who  had  been  a  pupil  of  Mozart,  and  who,  as  well  as  his  wife  Chris- 
tiane,  was  fanatico  per  la  inusicu,  proposed  that  Beethoven  should  come  and  live 
at  his  palace.  Tiiev  had  no  children  ;  a  suite  of  rooms  was  placed  at  the  musi- 
cian's disposal  ;  no  terms  were  proposed  ;  the  offer  was  the  most  delicate  and 
friendly  imaginable,  and  was  accepted  by  Beetiioven  in  the  spirit  in  which  it  was 
made.  For  ten  years  he  resided  with  the  Lichnowskis,  and  these  were  probably 
the  years  of  purest  happiness  in  the  great  com|)oser's  life,  although  early  in  their 
21 


322  ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 

course  the  terrible  affliction  of  deafness  began  to  be  felt  l)y  him.  He  at  this 
time  freelv  frequented  the  salons  of  the  Viennese  nobility,  many  of  whom  were 
accomplished  virtuosi  themselves,  and  were  able  to  appreciate  the  great  genius  of 
the  new-comer,  rough  and  bearish  as  oftentimes  he  must  have  appeared  to  them — 
a  great  contrast  to  the  courtly  Haydn  and  Salieri,  who  might  be  seen  sitting  side 
by  side  on  the  sofa  in  some  grandee's  music-room,  with  their  swords,  wigs,  ruf- 
fles, silk  stockings,  and  snuff-boxes,  while  the  insignificant-looking  and  meanly 
dressed  Beethoven  used  to  stand  unnoticed  in  a  corner.  Here  is  a  description 
of  his  appearance  given  by  a  Frau  von  Bernhard  :  "  When  he  visited  us,  he  gen- 
erallv  put  his  head  in  at  the  door  before  entering,  to  see  if  there  were  anv  one 
present  he  did  not  like.  He  was  short  and  insigniticant-looking,  with  a  red  face 
covered  with  pock-marks.  His  hair  was  quite  dark.  His  dress  was  very  com- 
mon, quite  a  contrast  to  the  elegant  attire  customarv  in  those  days,  especiallv  in 
our  circles.  .  .  .  He  was  very  proud,  and  I  have  known  him  refuse  to  plav, 
even  when  Countess  Thun,  the  mother  of  Princess  Lichnowski,  had  fallen  on 
her  knees  before  him  as  he  lay  on  the  sofa  to  beg  him  to.  The  Countess  was  a 
very  eccentric  person.  ...  At  the  Lichnowskis'  I  saw  Haydn  and  Salieri, 
who  were  then  very  famous,  while  Beethoven  excited  no  interest." 

It  was  in  the  year  1800  that  Beethoven  at  last  was  compelled  to  acknowledge 
to  himself  the  terrible  calamity  of  almost  total  deafness  that  had  befallen  him. 
He  writes  to  his  friend  Wegeler,  "  If  I  had  not  read  somewhere  that  man  must 
not  of  his  own  free  will  depart  this  life,  I  should  long  ere  this  have  been  no 
iBore,  and  that  through  my  own  act.  .  .  .  What  is  to  be  the  result  of  this 
the  good  God  alone  knows.  I  beg  of  you  not  to  mention  my  state  to  any  one, 
not  even  to  Lorchen  [Wegeler's  wife].  But,"  he  continues,  "  I  live  only  in  my 
music,  and  no  sooner  is  one  thing  completed  than  another  is  begun.  In  fact,  as 
at  present,  I  am  often  engaged  on  three  or  four  compositions  at  one  time." 

But  at  first  all  was  not  gloom  ;  for  Beethoven  was  in  love — not  the  love  of 
fleeting  fancy  that,  like  other  poets,  he  may  have  experienced  before,  but  deeply, 
tragically,  in  love  ;  and  it  seems  that,  for  a  time  at  least,  this  love  was  returned. 
The  lady  was  the  Countess  Julia  Guicciardi  ;  but  his  dream  did  not  last  long,  for 
in  the  year  1801  she  married  a  Count  Gallenberg.  Hardly  anything  is  known  of 
this  love  affair  of  Beethoven's.  A  few  letters  full  of  passionate  tenderness,  and 
with  a  certain  very  pathetic  simple  trustfulness  in  her  love  running  through  them 
all — on  which  her  marriage  shortly  afterward  is  a  strange  comment  ;  the  "  Moon- 
light Sonata,"  vibrating,  as  it  is  throughout,  with  a  lover's  supremest  ecstasy  of 
devotion,  these  are  the  only  records  of  that  one  blissful  epoch  in  the  poor  com- 
poser's life  ;  but  how  much  it  affected  his  after  life,  how  it  mingled  in  the  dreams 
from  which  his  loveliest  creations  of  later  years  arose,  it  is  impossible  now  to  say. 
In  a  letter  to  Wegeler,  dated  November  16,  1801,  he  says,  "You  can  hardly 
realize  what  a  miserable,  desolate  life  mine  has  been  for  the  last  two  years  ;  my 
defective  hearing  everywhere  pursuing  me  like  a  spectre,  making  me  fly  from 
ev^ery  one,  and  appear  a  misanthrope  ;  and  yet  no  one  in  reality  is  less  so  !  This 
change  [to  a  happier  life]  has  been  brought  about  by  a  lovely  and  fascinating 


AN  ANECDOTE  ABOUT  BEETHOVEN 


PAUL  LEYENDECKER 


iiin  \\x\x 


I  as  oftcr 
Illy  Haydn  and  balieri,  who  y< 

's  music-room.  u 

........  while  the  insit:  ' 

rand  unnoticed  in  a  cu 
ii  by  a  Frau  yon  Bernhard':  '•  When  he 
ill  at  the  door  before  entering,  lo  see  if  ti 
....  ...I  like.      H'-  ^    '=  sliort  and  insigiiiticant-lookinu    .    ,.. 

.  ith  pock-marks.  .air  was  quite  dark.     His  dress  was  n- 

i;i.r.i.  quite  a  contrast  to  the  elegant  attire  customary  in  those  days,  especially  in 
(Hir  circles..    .     .     .     He  was  very  proud,  and  1  have  known  him  refuse  to  plav, 

even  when  Countess  Than,  the  mother  of  Princess  Lichnowski,  had  fallen  on 
her  knees  before  him  as  he  Irtv  on  the  <=ofa  to  beg  him  to.  The  Countess  was  a 
very  eccentric  person.  nowskis'  1  saw  Haydn  and  Salieri, 

who  W'  ' 

I:  ■-,■ 


.       V,   I  I  . 

T^avoHTaaa  tuoha  aToaoazA  >ia 

uen  I  Weir'  ^^  '^"^^  '"  '"Y 

ir,i..-,  .  and  nu  souner  is  one  lliing  compictLU  maa  anumcr  is  ucguu.      in  tact,  as 
at  present,  I  am  often  enga.ijcd  on  three  or  four  compositions  at  one  time." 

But  at  first  all  was  not  gloom ;  for  Beethoven  was  in  love — not  the  love  of 
fleeting  fancy  that,  like  other  poets,  he  may  have  experienced  before,  but  deeply, 
tragical'  '  '    •  '        for  a  time  at  least,  this  love  was  returned. 

The  la>  i-inr  li  ■  V^ir  his  dr^am  'lid  not  Inst  lone.  f"r 

in  the  ^ 

this  ]r,\e  ai:  tiers  full  • 

with  a  certain  '  i.     -         •  l  i  mir  ; 

all — on  vi'iii'i  ,    comn  "W- 

i   .itf  S  Liehout,  with  a  lov'  Msy  of 

,  hat  one  r  com- 

;  out  i;  ■'       '  Ireams 

,  Ik,  ',  !o  say. 

lU  can  hardly 

xo  years  ;  my 

me  fly  from 

less  so  !     This 

;  has  h>  I  about  b\  a   '  nd  fascinating 


BEETHOVEN  323 

girl  who  loves  me  and  whom  I  love.  After  the  lapse  of  two  years  I  have  again 
enjoyed  some  blissful  moments,  and  now  for  the  first  time  I  feel  that  marriage 
can  bestow  happiness  ;  but  alas  !  she  is  not  in  the  same  rank  of  life  as  myself. 
.  .  .  You  shall  see  me  as  happy  as  I  am  destined  to  be  here  below,  but  not 
unhappy.  No,  that  I  could  not  bear.  I  will  grasp  Fate  by  the  throat  ;  it  shall 
not  utterly  crush  me.  Oh,  it  is  so  glorious  to  live  one's  life  a  thousand  times  ! " 
No  misanthropy  this,  surely  ;  he  could  not  always  speak  the  speech  of  common 
men,  or  care  for  the  tawdry  bravery  of  titles  or  fine  clothes  in  which  they  strutted, 
but  what  a  heart  there  was  in  the  man,  what  a  wondrous  insight  into  all  the 
beauty  of  the  world,  visible  and  invisible,  around  him  !  The  most  glorious  love- 
song  ever  composed,  "  Adelaide,"  was  written  by  him  ;  but  Julia  Guicciardi  pre- 
ferred a  Count  Gallenberg,  keeper  of  the  royal  archives  in  Vienna,  and  Beet- 
hoven, to  the  end  of  his  days,  went  on  his  way  alone. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  he  composed  his  oratorio,  "The  Mount  of  Olives," 
which  can  hardly  be  reckoned  among  his  finest  works ;  and  his  one  opera — but 
such  an  opera — "  Fidelio."  The  greater  part  of  these  works  was  composed  dur- 
ing his  stay,  in  the  summer  months,  at  Hetzendorf,  a  pretty,  secluded  little  village 
near  Schonbrunn.  He  spent  his  days  wandering  alone  through  the  quiet,  shady 
alleys  of  the  imperial  park  there,  and  his  favorite  seat  was  between  two  boughs 
of  a  venerable  oak,  at  a  height  of  about  two  feet  from  the  ground.  For  some 
time  he  had  apartments  at  a  residence  of  Baron  Pronay's,  near  this  village ;  but 
he  suddenly  left,  "  because  the  baron  would  persist  in  making  him  profound 
bows  every  time  that  he  met  him."  Like  a  true  poet,  he  delighted  in  the  coun- 
try. "  No  man  on  earth,"  he  writes,  "  loves  the  country  more.  Woods,  trees, 
and  rock  give  the  response  which  man  requires.  Every  tree  seems  to  sav,  '  Holv, 
holy.'" 

In  1804  the  magnificent  "  Eroica "  symphony  was  completed.  This  had 
originally  been  commenced  in  honor  of  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  then  First  Consul, 
who,  Beethoven — throughout  his  life  an  ardent  Republican — then  believed  was 
about  to  bring  liberty  to  all  the  nations  of  Europe.  When  the  news  of  the  em- 
pire came  the  dream  departed,  and  Beethoven,  in  a  passionate  rage,  tore  the  title 
page  of  the  symphony  in  two,  and,  with  a  torrent  of  imprecations  against  the  ty- 
rant, stamped  on  the  torn  fragments. 

"  My  hero — a  tyrant  !  "  he  shrieked,  as  he  trampled  on  the  poor  page.  On 
this  page  the  inscription  had  been  simply,  "  Bonaparte — Luigi  v.  Beethoven." 
For  some  years  he  refused  to  publish  the  work,  and,  when  at  last  this  was  doni', 
the  inscription  read  as  follows  :  "  Sinfonia  Eroica  per  fcstigiari  il  sovvenire  d'un 
grand'  uomo "  (Heroic  symphony,  to  celebrate  the  memory  of  a  great  man). 
When  Napoleon  died,  in  1821,  Beethoven  said,  "  Seventeen  years  before  I  com- 
posed the  music  for  this  occasion  ;"  and  surely  no  grander  music  llian  that  of  the 
"  Funeral  March  "  was  ever  composed  for  the  obsequies  of  a  fallen  hero.  This 
is  not  the  place  to  enter  into  a  description  of  the  marvellous  succession  of  colos- 
sal works — symphonies,  concertos,  sonatas,  trios,  quartets,  etc.,  culminating  in  the 
"  Choral  Symphony,"  his  ninth,  and  last — which,  through  those  long  years  of  a 


3-24  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

silent  life,  imprisoned  within  himself,  the  great  master  put  forth.  His  deafness 
prevented  his  appearing  in  publie  to  conduct,  although,  with  the  natural  desire 
of  a  composer  to  be  present  at  the  production  of  his  own  work,  he  long  struggled 
to  take  his  part  in  the  first  performances  of  symphonies  and  concertos. 

When  the  great  choral  symphony  was  first  performed  he  attempted  to  con- 
duct, but  in  reality  another  conductor  was  stationed  near  him  to  give  the  right 
time  to  the  band.  iVfter  the  majestic  instrumental  movements  had  been  played 
came  the  final  one,  concluding  with  Schiller's  "  Hymn  to  Joy."  The  chorus 
breaks  forth,  thundering  out  in  concert  with  all  the  instruments.  At  the  words 
"  Seid  umschlunger,  Millionen,"  the  audience  could  no  longer  restrain  their  ex- 
cited delight,  and  burst  into  tremendous  applause,  drowning  the  voices  of  singers 
and  the  sounds  of  strings  and  brass.  The  last  notes  are  heard,  but  still  Beethoven 
stands  there  absorbed  in  thought — he  does  not  know  that  the  music  is  ended. 
This  was  the  first  time  that  the  people  realized  the  full  deprivation  of  hearing 
from  which  he  suffered.  Fraulein  Unger,  the  soprano,  gently  takes  his  arm  and 
turns  him  round  to  front  the  acclaiming  multitude.  There  are  few  in  that  crowd 
who,  while  thev  cheer,  do  not  feel  the  tears  stealing  down  their  cheeks  at  the 
sight  of  the  poor  lonely  man  who,  from  the  prison-house  of  his  affliction,  has 
brought  to  them  the  gladness  of  thought  so  divine.  Unmoved,  he  bowed  his 
acknowledgment,  and  quietly  left  the  building. 

His  later  years  were  embittered  with  troubles  about  his  nephew  Carl,  a  youth 
to  whom  he  was  fondly  attached,  but  who  shamefully  repaid  the  love  of  the  deso- 
late old  man.  Letters  like  the  following,  to  the  teacher  in  whose  house  the  boy 
lived,  show  the  constant  thought  and  affection  given  to  this  boy  :  "  Your  esti- 
mable lady  is  politely  requested  to  let  the  undersigned  know  as  soon  as  possible 
(that  I  may  not  be  obliged  to  keep  it  all  in  my  head)  how  many  pairs  of  stock- 
ings, trousers,  shoes,  and  drawers  are  required,  and  how  many  yards  of  kersey- 
mere to  make  a  pair  of  black  trousers  for  my  tall  nephew." 

His  death  was  the  result  of  a  cold  which  produced  inflammation  of  the  lungs. 
On  the  morning  of  March  24,  1827,  he  took  the  sacrament  and  when  the  clergy- 
man was  gone  and  his  friends  stood  round  his  bed,  he  muttered,  ''  Plauditc  amici, 
comedia  Jinita  est."  He  then  fell  into  an  agony  so  intense  that  he  could  no 
longer  articulate,  and  thus  continued  until  the  evening  of  the  26th.  A  violent 
thunder-storm  arose  ;  one  of  his  friends,  watching  by  his  bedside  when  the  thun- 
der was  rolling  and  a  vivid  flash  of  lightning  lit  up  the  room,  saw  him  suddenly 
open  his  eyes,  lift  his  right  hand  upward  for  some  seconds — as  if  in  defiance  of 
the  powers  of  evil— with  clenched  fist  and  a  stern,  solemn  expression  on  his  face ; 
and  then  he  sank  back  and  died. 


PAGANINI 


325 


PAGANINI 

(l 784-1 840) 

NicoLO  Pagaxixi,  whose  European  fame  as  a 
violinist  entitles  him  to  a  notice  here,  was  born 
at  Genoa  in  1784.  His  father,  a  commission-broker, 
played  on  the  mandolin  ;  but  fully  aware  of  the  in- 
^-"riority  of  an  instrument  so  limited  in  power,  he 
1  -It  a  violin  into  his  son's  hands,  and  initiated  him  in 
the  principles  of  music.  The  child  succeeded  so  well 
lender  parental  tuition,  that  at  eight  years  of  age  he 
plaved  three  times  a  week  in  the  church,  as  well  as 
in  the  public  saloons.  At  the  same  period  he  com- 
posed a  sonata.  In  his  ninth  year  he  was  placed 
under  the  instruction  of  Costa,  first  violoncellist  of 
Genoa ;  then  had  lessons  of  RoUa,  a  famous  per- 
former and  composer;  and  finally  studied  counter- 
point at  Parma  under  Ghiretti  and  the  celebrated  maestro  Paer.  He  now  took 
an  engagement  at  Lucca,  where  he  chiefly  associated  with  persons  who  at  the 
gaming-table  stripped  him  of  his  gains  as  quickly  as  he  acquired  them.  He 
there  received  the  appointment  of  director  of  orchestra  to  the  court,  at  which  the 
Princess  Elisa  Bacciochi,  sister  of  Napoleon  I.,  presided,  and  thither  invited,  to 
the  full  extent  of  her  means,  superior  talent  of  every  kind.  In  1813  he  per- 
formed at  Milan  ;  five  years  after,  at  Turin  ;  and  subsequently  at  Florence  and 
Naples.  In  1828  he  visited  Vienna,  where  a  very  popular  violinist  and  com- 
poser, Mayseder,  asked  him  how  he  produced  such  new  effects.  His  reply  was 
characteristic  of  a  selfish  mind  :  "  Chacjin  a  scs  secrets."  In  that  capital,  it  is 
affirmed,  he  was  imprisoned,  being  accused  of  having  murdered  his  wife.  He 
challenged  proofs  of  his  ever  having  been  married,  which  could  not  be  produced. 
Then  he  was  charged  with  having  poignarded  his  mistress.  This  he  also  publicly 
refuted.  The  fact  is  that  he  knew  better  how  to  make  money  than  friends,  and 
he  raised  up  enemies  wherever  his  thirst  for  gold  led  him.  Avarice  was  his 
master-passion  ;  and,  second  to  this,  gross  sensualitv. 

The  year  183 1  found  Paganini  in  Paris,  in  which  excitable  capita!  he  pro- 
duced a  sensation  not  inferior  to  that  created  by  the  visit  of  Rossini.  Even  this 
renowned  composer  was  so  carried  away,  either  by  the  actual  genius  of  the  vio- 
linist or  by  the  current  of  popular  enthusiasm,  that  he  is  said  to  have  wept  on 
hearing  Paganini  for  the  first  time.  He  arrived  in  England  in  1831,  and  im- 
mediately announced  a  concert  at  the  Italian  Opera  House,  at  a  price  which,  if 
acceded  to,  would  have  yielded  ^3,391  per  night;  but  the  attempt  was  too  auda- 
cious, and  he  was  compelled  to  abate   his  demands,  though   he    succeeded   in 


326  ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 

drawing  audiences  fifteen  nights  in  that  season  at  the  ordinary  high  prices  of  the 
King's  Theatre.  He  also  gave  concerts  in  other  parts  of  London,  and  per- 
formed at  benefits,  always  taking  at  these  a  large  proportion  of  the  proceeds. 
He  visited  most  of  the  great  towns,  where  his  good  fortune  still  attended  him. 
He  was  asked  to  play  at  the  Commemoration  Festival  at  O.xford,  in  1834,  and 
demanded  1,000  guineas  for  his  assistance  at  three  concerts.  His  terms  were  of 
course  rejected. 

Paganini  died  at  Nice,  in  1840,  of  a  diseased  laryn.x  ("phthisic  laryngee"  ). 
By  his  will,  dated  1837,  he  gave  his  two  sisters  legacies  of  60,000  and  70,000 
francs;  his  mother  a  pension  of  1,200;  the  mother  of  his  son  Achillino  (a  Jewess 
of  Milan)  a  similar  pension  ;  and  the  rest  of  his  fortune,  amounting  to  4,000,000 
francs,  devolved  on  his  son.  These  and  other  facts  before  felated,  we  give  on 
the  authority  of  the  "  Biographic  Universelle." 

Paganini  certainly  was  a  man  of  genius  and  a  great  performer,  but  sacrificed 
his  art  to  his  avarice.  His  mastery  over  the  violin  was  almost  marvellous, 
though  he  made  an  ignoble  use  of  his  power  by  employing  it  to  captivate  the 
mob  of  pretended  amateurs  by  feats  little  better  than  sleight-of-hand.  His  per- 
formance on  a  single  string,  and  the  perfection  of  his  harmonics,  were  very  extra- 
ordinary ;  but  why,  as  was  asked  at  the  time,  be  confined  to  one  string  when 
there  are  four  at  command  that  would  answer  every  musical  purpose  so  much 
better?  His  tone  was  pure,  though  not  strong,  his  strings  having  been  of  smaller 
diameter  than  usual,  to  enable  him  to  strain  them  at  pleasure ;  for  he  tuned  his 
instrument  most  capriciously.  He  could  be  a  very  expressive  player ;  we  have 
heard  him  produce  effects  deeply  pathetic.  His  arpeggios  evinced  his  knowl- 
edge of  harmony,  and  some  of  his  compositions  exhibit  many  original  and 
beautiful  traits. 


MENDELSSOHN 

By  C.  E.  Bourne 
(l  809-1 847) 

r?]*5^-B;;^ENDELSS0HN's  lot  in  life  was  strikingly  different  from  that  of  all  the 
^^PV'^J^^rt  ™"Jsici^'''S  of  whom  I  have  hitherto  written  ;  he  never  knew,  like 
^v^V'^T-^pV  Schubert,  what  grinding  poverty  was,  or  suffered  the  long  worries 
)al^'^lFyX^  ^'^'^*-  Mozart  had  to  endure  for  lack  of  money.  His  father  was  a 
^  Jewish  banker  in  Berlin,  the  son  of  Moses  Mendelssohn,  a  philoso- 
pher whose  writings  had  already  made  the  name  celebrated  throughout  Europe. 
The  composer's  father  used  to  say,  with  a  very  natural  pride,  after  his  own  son 
had  grown  up,  "  Formerly  I  was  the  son  of  my  father,  and  now  I  am  the  father 
of  my  son  !  " 

Felix  Mendelssohn-Bartholdy  was  born  on    February   3,  1809.      His  parents 


PAGANINI   IN    PRISON. 


MENDELSSOHN 


327 


were  neither  of  them  trained  musicians,  though  both  appreciated  and  loved 
music,  and  it  was  from  his  mother  that  young  FeHx  received  his  first  music- 
lessons.     When  he  had  made   some  advance,  Ludwig  Berger  became  his  tutor 

for  the  piano,  and  Zelter,  a  very  learned 

and  severe  theorist,  for  counterpoint.     At 
,  ,,,...,  the  age  of  nine  years  Felix  had  attained 

such  proficicncv  that  we  find  him  taking 
the  pianoforte  part  in  a  trio  at  a  public 
concert  of  a  Herr  Gugel's,  and  when  twelve 
years  old  he  began  to  compose,  and  actual- 
ly wrote  a  trio,  some  sonatas,  a  cantata,  and 
several  organ  pieces.  His  home  life  was 
in  the  highest  degre,e  favorable  to  his  musi- 
cal development.  On  alternate  Sundays 
musical  performances  were  regularly  given 
with  a  small  orchestra  in  the  large  dining- 
room,  Felix  or  his  sister  Fanny,  who  also 
possessed  remarkable  musical  gifts,  taking 
the  pianoforte  part,  and  new  compositions 
bv  Felix  were  always  included  in  the  pro- 
giamme.  Many  friends,  musicians  and 
others,  used  to  be  present,  Zelter  regularly  among  their  number,  and  the  pieces 
were  always  freelv  commented  on,  Felix  receiving  then,  as  indeed  he  did  all  his 
life,  the  criticisms  expressed,  with  the  utmost  good-natured  readiness. 

In  1824  Moscheles,  at  that  time  a  celebrated  pianist,  and  residing  in  London, 
visited  Berlin,  and  was  asked  to  give  Felix  music-lessons.  This  is  the  testimony 
of  Moscheles,  an  excellent  and  kind-hearted  man,  and  a  thoroughly  skilled  mu- 
sician, after  spending  nearly  every  day  for  six  weeks  with  the  family  :  "  It  is  a 
family  such  as  I  have  never  known  before  ;  Felix,  a  mature  artist,  and  yet  but 
fifteen  ;  Fanny,  extraordinarily  gifted,  playing  Bach's  fugues  by  heart  and  with 
astonishing  correctness — in  fact,  a  thorough  musician.  The  parents  give  me  the 
impression  of  people  of  the  highest  cultivation  ; "  and  on  the  subject  of  lessons 
he  says  :  "  Felix  has  no  need  of  lessons  ;  if  he  wishes  to  take  a  hint  from  me  as 
to  anything  new,  he  can  easily  do  so."  But  it  is  very  pleasant  to  find  Mendels- 
sohn afterward  referring  to  these  lessons  as  having  urged  him  on  to  enthusiasm, 
and,  in  the  days  in  London  when  his  own  fame  had  far  outstripped  that  of  the 
older  musician,  acknowledging  himself  as  "  Moscheles's  pupil."  The  elder  Men- 
delssohn was  by  no  means  carried  away  by  the  applause  which  the  boy's  playing 
and  compositions  had  gained,  and  in  1825  he  took  his  son  to  Paris  to  obtain 
Cherubini's  opinion  as  to  his  musical  abilities,  with  a  view  to  the  choice  of  a  pro- 
fession ;  for  he  had  by  no  means  made  up  his  mind  that  Felix  should  spend  his 
whole  life  as  a  musician.  However,  the  surly  old  Florentine,  who  was  not  al- 
ways civil  or  appreciative  of  budding  genius  (icstc  Berlioz),  gave  a  decidedly  fa- 
vorable judgment  on  the  compositions  submitted  to  him,  and  urged  the  father  to 


328  ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 

devote  his  son  to  a  musical  career.  And,  indeed,  on  listening  to  the  pieces  which 
were  dated  this  year,  especially  a  beautiful  quartet  in  B  minor,  an  octet  for 
strings,  the  music  to  an  opera  in  two  acts,  "  Camacho's  Wedding,"  and  numerous 
pianoforte  pieces,  it  is  difficult  to  realize  that  the  composer  was  then  only  sixteen 
years  of  age,  or  that  anyone  could  question  the  artistic  vocation  that  claimed 
him.  But  the  next  year  a  work  was  written,  the  score  of  which  is  marked 
"  Berlin,  Ausfust  6,  1826,"  when  it  must  be  remembered  that  he  was  seventeen 
years  of  age,  which  of  itself  was  sufficient  to  rank  him  among  the  immortals — 
the  overture  to  the  "  Midsummer  Night's  Dream."  Full  of  lovely  imaginings, 
with  a  wonderful  fairy  grace  all  its  own,  and  a  bewitching  beauty,  revealing  not 
only  the  soul  of  the  true  poet,  but  also  the  musician  profoundly  skilled  in  all 
the  art  of  orchestral  effect,  it  is  hard  to  believe  that  it  is  the  work  of  a  boy  under 
twenty,  written  in  the  bright  summer  days  of  1826,  in  his  father's  garden  at  Ber- 
lin. 

Passing  over  the  intermediate  years  with  a  simple  reference  to  the  "  Meeres- 
stille,"  "  Calm  Sea  and  Prosperous  Voyage,"  which  was  then  composed,  and  a 
fine  performance  of  Bach's  "  Passion  Music,"  for  which  he  had  been  long  drilling 
the  members  of  the  Berlin  Singakademie,  the  next  event  is  a  visit  to  England  in 
1829,  where  he  was  received  with  extraordinary  warmth,  playing  at  the  Philhar- 
monic Concerts,  conducting  his  C  minor  Symphony,  which  he  dedicated  to  the 
Philharmonic  Society,  they  in  their  turn  electing  him  one  of  their  honorary  mem- 
bers ;  going  to  dinners,  balls,  and  the  House  of  Commons,  and  enjoying  himself 
most  huarelv.  His  letters  from  Enoland  at  this  time  are  brimming  over  with  fun 
and  graphic  description  ;  there  is  one  especially  amusing,  in  which  he  describes 
himself  with  two  friends  going  home  from  a  late  dinner  at  the  German  Ambassa- 
dor's, and  on  the  way  l)uying  three  German  sausages,  going  down  a  quiet  street  to 
devour  them,  with  all  the  while  joyous  laughter  and  snatches  of  part  songs. 
There  is  also  a  little  incident  of  this  time  showing  the  wonderful  memory  he  pos- 
sessed. After  a  concert  on  "  Midsummer  Night,"  when  the  "  Midsummer  Night's 
Dream  "  had  very  appropriatelv  been  played,  it  was  found  that  the  score  had  been 
lost  in  a  hackney-coach  as  the  party  were  returning  to  Mr.  Attwood's.  "  Never 
mind,"  said  Mendelssohn,  "  I  will  make  another,"  which  he  did,  and  on  compari- 
son with  the  separate  parts  not  a  single  difference  was  found  in  it. 

At  the  beginning  of  December  he  was  at  home  again,  and  that  winter  he 
wrote  the  "  Reformation  Symphony,"  intended  to  be  produced  at  the  tercente- 
nary festival  of  the  "Augsburg  Confession"  in  the  following  June.  This  sym- 
phony, with  which  Mendelssohn  was  not  entirely  satisfied,  was  only  once  per- 
formed during  his  lifetime,  but  since  his  death  it  has  frequently  been  performed, 
and  though  not  one  of  his  most  perfect  works,  is  recognized  as  a  noble  monument 
in  honor  of  a  great  event.  The  next  spring  he  again  set  out  on  his  travels,  this 
time  southward  to  Italy. 

In  1833  Mendelssohn  accepted  an  official  post  offered  him  by  the  authorities 
of  Dusseldorf,  by  which  the  entire  musical  arrangements  of  the  town,  church, 
theatre,  and  singing  societies  were  put  under  his  care,  Immermann,  the  celebrated 


MENDELSSOHN  329 

poet,  being  associated  with  him  in  the  direction  of  the  theatre.  Things,  however, 
did  not  go  on  very  smoothly  there.  Mendelssohn  found  all  the  many  worries  of 
theatrical  management — the  engagement  of  singers  and  musicians,  the  dissensions 
to  be  arranged,  the  many  tastes  to  be  conciliated — too  irksome,  and  he  did  not 
long  retain  this  appointment ;  but  the  life  among  his  friends  at  Dusseldorf  was 
most  delightful,  and  the  letters  written  at  this  time  are  exceedingly  lively  and 
■gay.  It  was  here  that  he  received  the  commission  from  the  Caecilia-Verein  of 
Frankfort  for,  and  commenced,  his  grand  oratorio  "  St.  Paul."  The  words  for 
this,  as  also  for  the  "  Elijah  "  and  "  Hymn  of  Praise  "  afterward,  he  selected  him- 
self with  the  help  of  his  friend  Schubung,  and  they  are  entirely  from  the  Bible^ 
as  he  said,  "The  Bible  is  always  the  best  of  all."  Circumstances  prevented  the 
oratorio  being  then  produced  at  Frankfort,  and  the  first  public  performance  took 
place  at  the  Lower  Rhine  Festival  at  Dusseldorf,  in  May,  1836. 

But  his  visits  to  Frankfort  had  a  very  important  result  in  another  way.  Men- 
delssohn there  met  Mademoiselle  Cecile  Jeanrenaud,  the  daughter  of  a  pastor  of 
the  French  Reformed  Church,  and,  though  he  had  frequently  indulged  in  the 
admiration  of  beautiful  and  clever  women — which  is  allowable,  and  indeed  an 
absolute  necessity  for  a  poet  ! — now  for  the  first  time  he  fell  furiously  in  plain  un- 
mistakable and  downright  love.  But  it  is  more  characteristic  of  the  staid  Teuton 
than  the  impulsive  musician,  that  before  plighting  his  troth  to  her  he  went  away 
for  a  month's  bathing  at  Scheveningen,  in  Holland,  for  the  purpose  of  testing  the 
strength  of  his  affection  by  this  absence.  On  his  return,  finding  his  amatory  pulse 
still  beating  satisfactorily,  he  proposed  to  the  young  lady,  and,  as  it  must  be  pre- 
sumed that  she  had  already  made  up  her  own  mind  without  any  testing,  he  was 
accepted.  On  March  28,  1837,  they  were  married,  and  the  wedded  life  that  then 
began  was  one  of  pure,  unclouded  happiness  to  the  very  end.  Cecile  Mendels- 
sohn was  a  beautiful,  gentle-hearted,  and  loving  wife,  just  the  one  to  give  a  weary 
and  nervous  artist  in  the  home-life,  with  herself  and  the  children  near  him,  the 
blessed  solace  of  rest  and  calm  that  he  so  needed.  It  is  thus  that  Edward  Dev- 
rient,  the  great  German  actor,  and  one  of  Mendelssohn's  most  intimate  friends, 
describes  her :  "  Cecile  was  one  of  those  sweet  womanly  natures  whose  gentle 
simplicity,  whose  mere  presence,  soothed  and  pleased.  She  was  slight,  with  feat- 
ures of  striking  beauty  and  delicacy  ;  her  hair  was  between  brown  and  gold,  but 
the  transcendent  lustre  of  her  great  blue  eyes,  and  the  brilliant  roses  of  her  cheeks, 
were  sad  harbingers  of  early  death.  She  spoke  litl'.e,  and  never  with  animation, 
in  a  low,  soft  voice.  Shakespeare's  words,  "  My  gracious  silence,"  applied  to  her 
no  less  than  to  the  wife  of  Coriolanus. 

After  giving  up  his  official  position  at  Dusseldorf,  in  1835,  Mendelssohn  was 
invited  to  become  the  conductor  of  the  now  famous  Gewandhaus  concerts  at 
Leipsic,  a  post  which  he  gladly  accepted,  and  which,  retained  by  him  for  many 
years,  was  to  be  one  of  the  greatest  delights  of  his  artistic  life.  Not  only  was  he 
lov^ed  and  appreciated  in  Leipsic — far  more  than  in  Berlin,  his  own  citv — but  he 
had  here  an  opportunity  of  assisting  many  composers  and  virtuosi,  who  otherwise 
would  have  sought  in  vain  for  a  hearing.     Thus,  after  Liszt,  when  visiting  the 


330  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

town,  had  been  first  of  all  received  with  great  coldness,  owing  to  the  usual  prices 
of  admission  to  the  concerts  having  been  raised,  Mendelssohn  set  everything 
straight  by  having  a  soiree  in  his  honor  at  the  Gewandhaus,  where  there  were 
three  hundred  and  fifty  people,  orchestra,  chorus,  punch,  pastry,  Meeresstille 
Psalm,  Bach's  Triple  Concerto,  choruses  from  St.  Paul,  Fantasia  on  Lucia,  the 
Erl  King,  the  Devil  and  his  Grandmother,  the  latter  probably  a  mild  satirical  ref- 
erence to  Liszt's  stormy  and  often  incoherent  playing.  It  is  also  pleasant  to  find 
how  cordially  Mendelssohn  received  Berlioz  there,  as  told  in  the  "  Memoirs"  of 
the  latter,  spending  ungrudgingly  long  days  in  aiding  in  rehearsals  for  his 
"  Romeo  et  Juliette,"  though  Mendelssohn  never  sympathized  much  with  Ber- 
lioz's eccentric  muse. 

The  "  Lobgesang,"  or  "  Hymn  of  Praise,"  a  "  symphonie-cantata,"  as  he 
called  it,  was  his  next  great  work,  composed  in  1840,  together  with  other  music, 
at  the  request  of  the  Leipsic  Town-Council,  for  a  festival  held  in  that  town  in 
commemoration  of  the  invention  of  printing,  on  June  25th.  None  who  have 
heard  this  work  can  forget  the  first  impression  produced  when  the  grand  instru- 
mental movements  with  which  it  commences  are  merged  in  the  majestic  chorus, 
"  All  men,  all  things,  praise  ye  the  Lord,"  or  the  intensely  dramatic  effect  of  the 
repeated  tenor  cry,  "  Watchman,  will  the  night  soon  pass  ?  "  answered  at  last  by 
the  clear  soprano  message  of  glad  tidings,  "  The  night  is  departing,  the  day  is  at 
hand ! "  This  "  watchman  "  episode  was  added  some  time  afterward,  and,  as  he 
told  a  friend,  was  suggested  to  the  composer  during  the  weary  hours  of  a  long 
sleepless  night,  when  the  words,  "Will  the  night  soon  pass?"  again  and  again 
seemed  to  be  repeated  to  him.  But  a  greater  work  even  than  this  was  now  in 
progress  ;  the  "  Elijah  "  had  been  begun. 

In  1 84 1  began  a  troublesome  and  harassing  connection  with  Berlin,  a  city 
where,  except  in  his  home  life,  Mendelssohn  never  seems  to  have  been  very  for- 
tunate. At  the  urgent  entreaty  of  the  king,  he  went  to  reside  there  as  head  of 
the  new  Musical  Academy.  But  disagreements  arose,  and  he  did  not  long  take 
an  active  part  in  the  management.  The  king,  however,  was  very  anxious  to  re- 
tain his  services,  and  a  sort  of  general  office  seems  to  have  been  created  for  him, 
the  duties  of  which  were  to  supply  music  for  any  dramatic  works  which  the  king 
took  it  into  his  head  to  have  so  embellished.  And,  though  it  is  to  this  that  we 
owe  the  noble  "  Antigone,"  "  Qidipus,"  "  Athalie,"  "Midsummer  Night's  Dream," 
and  other  music,  this  work  to  dictation  was  very  worrying,  and  one  cannot  think 
without  impatience  of  the  annoyances  to  which  he  was  subjected.  The  king 
could  not  understand  why  he  shrank  from  writing  music  to  the  choruses  of  JEs- 
chylus's  "  Eumenides."     Other  composers  would  do  it  by  the  yard,  why  not  he? 

Passing  rapidly  over  the  intervening  years  filled  with  busy  work,  both  in  com- 
position and  as  one  of  the  principals  of  a  newly  started  Conservatorium  in  Leip- 
sic, we  come  to  1846,  when  his  great  work  "  Elijah  "  was  at  last  completed  and 
performed.  On  August  26th,  at  the  Birmingham  Festival,  the  performance 
went  splendidly.  Staudigl  took  the  part  of  the  prophet,  and  a  young  tenor, 
Lockey,  sang  the  air,  "  Then  shall  the  righteous,"  in  the  last  part,  as  Mendels- 


MENDELSSOHN  331 

sohn  says,  "  so  very  beautifully,  that  I  was  obliged  to  collect  myself  to  prevent 
my  being  overcome,  and  to  enable  me  to  beat  time  steadily."  Rarely,  indeed, 
has  a  composer  so  truly  realized  his  own  conception  as  Mendelssohn  did  in  the 
great  tone-picture  which  he  drew  of  the  Prophet  of  Carmel  and  the  wilderness. 

"  I  figured  to  myself,"  he  says,  "  Elijah  as  a  grand,  mighty  prophet,  such  as 
might  again  reappear  in  our  own  day,  energetic  and  zealous,  stern,  wrathful,  and 
gloomy,  a  striking  contrast  to  the  court  myrmidons  and  popular  rabble — in  fact, 
in  opposition  to  the  whole  world,  and  yet  borne  on  angel's  wings  !  "  Nothing 
can  be  finer  than  this,  with  that  exquisite  touch  in  the  last  words,  "  in  opposition  to 
the  whole  world,  and  yet  borne  on  angel's  wiiigs." 

After  returning  to  Germany  he  was  soon  busily  employed  in  recasting  some 
portions  of  "Elijah  "  with  which  he  was  not  satisfied  ;  he  had  also  another  ora- 
torio on  even  a  grander  scale,  "  Christus,"  already  commenced  ;  and  at  last,  after 
all  his  life-long  seeking  in  vain  for  a  good  libretto  for  an  opera,  he  had  begun  to 
set  one  written  by  Geibel,  the  German  poet,  "  Loreley,"  to  music.  But  his 
friends  now  noticed  how  worn  and  weary  he  used  oftentimes  to  look,  and  how 
strangely  irritable  he  frequently  was,  and  there  can  hardly  be  a  doubt  that  some 
form  of  the  cerebral  disease  from  which  his  father  and  several  of  his  relations 
had  died,  was  already,  deep-seated  and  obscure,  disquieting  him.  The  sudden  an- 
nouncement of  the  death  of  his  sister,  Fanny  Hensel,  herself  a  musical  genius,  to 
whom  he  was  very  fondly  attached,  on  his  return  to  Frankfort  from  his  last  visit 
to  England  in  May,  1847,  terribly  affected  him.  He  fell  to  the  ground  with  a 
loud  shriek,  and  it  was  long  before  he  recovered  consciousness. 

Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  he  never  really  recovered  from  this  shock.  In 
the  summer  he  went  with  his  wife  and  children,  and  in  company  with  his  brother 
Paul  and  his  family,  on  a  tour  in  Switzerland,  where  he  hoped  that  complete 
idleness  as  regards  music,  life  in  the  open  air,  sketching,  and  intercourse  with 
chosen  friends,  might  once  more  give  strength  to  his  enfeebled  nerves.  And  for 
a  time  the  beauty  of  the  mountains  and  the  lakes  seemed  to  bring  him  rest,  and 
again  he  began  to  work  at  his  oratorio  "  Christus  ; "  but  still  his  friends  continued 
anxious  about  him.  He  looked  broken  down  and  aged,  a  constant  agitation 
seemed  to  possess  him,  and  the  least  thing  would  often  strangely  affect  and  upset 
him. 

In  September  he  returned  to  Leipsic  ;  he  was  then  more  cheerful,  and  able 
to  talk  about  music  and  to  write,  although  he  could  not  resume  the  conductor- 
ship  of  the  Gcwandhaus  concerts.  He  again  had  projects  in  view.  Jenny  Lind 
was  to  sing  in  his  "  Elijah,"  at  Vienna,  whither  he  would  go  and  conduct,  and  he 
was  about  to  publish  some  new  songs.  One  day  in  October  he  went  to  call  upon 
his  friend,  Madame  Frege,  a  gifted  lady  who,  he  said,  sang  his  songs  better  than 
anyone  else,  to  consult  her  about  some  new  songs.  She  sang  them  over  to  liim 
several  times,  and  then,  as  it  was  getting  dark,  she  went  out  of  the  room  for  a 
few  minutes  to  order  lights.  When  she  returned  he  was  lying  on  the  sofa,  shiv- 
ering with  cold,  and  in  agonizing  pain.  Leeches  were  applied,  and  he  partially 
recovered  ;  but  another  attack  followed,  and  this  was  the  last. 


332 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


FRANZ   LISZT 

By  Rev.  Huc.h  R.  Haweis,  M.A. 
(1811-1886) 

FRANZ  Liszt    was    born    in    181 1.      He   had  the  hot 
Hungarian  blood  of  his  father,  the  fervid  German 
spirit  of  his   mother,  and  he  inherited  the    lofty    inde- 
pendence, with  none  of  the  class  prejudices,  of  the  old 
-  Hungarian    nobility    from    which    he    sprang.       Liszt's 
;'    father,  Adam,  earned  a  modest  livelihood  as  agent  and 
accountant  in  the  house  of  Count  Esterhazy.      In  that 
great    musical    famil)-,  inseparably    associated    with    the 
names  of    Haydn   and  Schubert,  Adam  Liszt  had  fre- 
quent opportunities  of  meeting  distinguished  musicians. 
The  prince's  private  band  had  risen  to  public  fame  un- 
der the  instruction  of  the  venerable  Haydn  himself.     The  Liszts,  father  and  son, 
often  went  to  Eisenstadt,  where  the  count  lived  ;  there  they  rubbed  elbows  with 
Cherubini  and  Hummel,  a  pupil  of  Mozart. 

Franz  took  to  music  from  his  earliest  childhood.  When  about  five  years  old 
he  was  asked  what  he  would  like  to  do.  "  Learn  the  piano,"  said  the  little  fel- 
low. Soon  afterward  his  father  asked  him  what  he  would  like  to  be  ;  the  child 
pointed  to  a  print  of  Beethoven  hanging  on  the  wall,  and  said,  "  Like  him." 
Long  before  his  feet  could  reach  the  pedals  or  his  fingers  stretch  an  octave,  the 
boy  spent  all  his  spare  time  strumming,  making  what  he  called  "clangs,"  chords 
and  modulations.      He  mastered  scales  and  exercises  without  difficulty. 

Czerny  at  once  took  to  Liszt,  but  refused  to  take  anything  for  his  instruction. 
Salieri  was  also  fascinated,  and  instructed  him  in  harmony  ;  and  fortunate  it  was 
that  Liszt  began  his  course  under  two  strict  mentors.  He  soon  began  to  resent 
Czerny's  method — -thought  he  knew  better  and  needed  not  those  dry  studies  of 
Clementi  and  that  irksome  fingering  by  rule — he  could  finger  anything  in  a 
half-a-dozen  different  ways.  There  was  a  moment  when  it  seemed  that  master 
and  pupil  would  have  to  part,  but  timely  concessions  to  genius  paved  the  way  to 
dutiful  submission,  and  years  afterward  the  great  master  dedicated  to  the  rigid 
disciplinarian  of  his  boyhood  his  "  Vingt-quatre  Grandes  Etudes  "  in  affectionate 
remembrance. 

Such  a  light  as  Liszt's  could  not  be  long  hid  ;  all  Vienna,  in  1822,  was  talk- 
ing of  the  wonderful  boy.  ''Est  dens  in  nobis"  wrote  the  papers,  profanely. 
The  "little  Hercules,"  the  "young  giant,"  the  boy  "virtuoso  from  the  clouds," 
were  among  the  epithets  coined  to  celebrate  his  marvellous  renderings  of  Hum- 
mel's  "  Concerto  in  A,"  and  a  free  "  Fantasia"  of  his  own.  The  Vienna  Con- 
cert  Hall  was  crowded  to  hear  him,  and  the  other  illustrious  artists — then,  as 


FRANZ    LISZT  ■  333 

indeed  they  have  been  ever  since  forced  to  do  wherever  Liszt  appeared — effaced 
themselves  with  as  good  a  grace  as  they  could. 

It  is  a  remarkable  tribute  to  the  generous  nature  as  well  as  to  the  consum- 
mate ability  of  Liszt,  that,  while  opposing  partisans  have  fought  bitterly  over  him 
— Thalbergites,  Herzites,  Mendelssohnites  versus  Lisztites — yet  few  of  the  great 
artists  who  have,  one  after  another,  had  to  yield  to  him  in  popularity  have  denied 
to  him  their  admiration,  while  most  of  them  have  given  him  their  friendship. 

Liszt  early  wooed,  and  early  won  Vienna.  He  spoke  ever  of  his  dear 
Viennese,  and  their  resounding  city.  A  concert  tour  on  his  way  to  Paris  brought 
him  before  the  critical  public  of  Stuttgart  and  Munich.  Hummel,  an  old  man, 
and  Moscheles,  then  in  his  prime,  heard  him  and  declared  that  his  playing  was 
equal  to  theirs.  But  Liszt  was  bent  upon  completing  his  studies  in  the  celebrated 
school  of  the  French  capital,  and  at  the  feet  of  the  old  musical  dictator,  Cheru- 
bini.  The  Erards,  who  were  destined  to  owe  so  much  to  Liszt,  and  to  whom 
Liszt  throughout  his  career  owed  so  much,  at  once  provided  him  with  a  magnifi- 
cent piano  ;  but  Cherubini  j)ut  in  force  a  certain  by-law  of  the  Conservatoire  ex- 
cluding foreigners,  and  excluded  Franz  Liszt. 

This  was  a  bitter  pill  to  the  eager  student.  He  hardly  knew  how  little  he  re- 
quired such  patronage.  In  a  very  short  time  ''  le  petit  Liszt  "  was  the  great  Paris 
sensation.  The  old  noblesse  tried  to  spoil  him  with  flattery,  the  Duchesse  de 
Berri  drugged  him  with  bonbons,  the  Duke  of  Orleans  called  him  the  "  little 
Mozart."  He  gave  private  concerts,  at  which  Herz,  Moscheles,  Lafont,  and  De 
Beriot,  assisted.  Rossini  would  sit  by  his  side  at  the  piano,  and  applaud.  He 
was  a  "miracle."  The  company  never  tired  of  extolling  his  "nerve,  fougue  et 
originality,"  while  the  ladies  who  petted  and  caressed  him  after  each  perform- 
ance, were  delighted  at  his  simple  and  graceful  carriage,  the  elegance  of  his  lan- 
guage, and  the  perfect  breeding  and  propriety  of  his  demeanor. 

He  was  only  twelve  when  he  played  for  the  first  time  at  the  Italian  Opera,  and 
one  of  those  singular  incidents  which  remind  one  of  Paganini's  triumphs  oc- 
curred. At  the  close  of  a  bravura  cadenza,  the  band  forgot  to  come  in,  so  ab- 
sorbed were  the  musicians  in  watching  the  young  prodigy.  Their  failure  was 
worth  a  dozen  successes  to  Liszt.  The  ball  of  the  marvellous  was  fairly  set  roll- 
ing. Gall,  the  inventor  of  phrenology,  took  a  cast  of  the  little  Liszt's  skull ; 
Talma,  the  tragedian,  embraced  him  openly  with  effusion  ;  and  the  misanthropic 
Marquis  de  Noailles  became  his  mentor,  and  initiated  him  into  the  art  of  paint- 
ing. 

In  1824  Liszt,  then  thirteen  years  old,  came  with  his  father  to  England  ;  his 
mother  returned  to  Austria.  He  went  down  to  Windsor  to  see  George  IV., 
who  was  delighted  with  him,  and  Liszt,  speaking  of  him  to  me,  said  :  "  I  was 
very  young  at  the  time,  but  I  remember  the  king  very  well — a  fine,  pompous- 
looking  gentleman.  George  IV.  went  to  Drury  Lane  on  jiurposc  to  hear  the 
boy,  and  commanded  an  encore.  Liszt  was  also  heard  in  the  theatre  at  Man- 
chester, and  in  several  private  houses. 

On  his  return  to  France,  people  noticed  a  change  in  him.      He  was  now  four- 


334  ARTISTS    AND   AUTHORS 

teen,  grave,  serious,  often  pre-occupied,  already  a  little  tired  of  praise,  and  exces- 
sively tired  of  being  called  "  le  petit  Liszt."  His  vision  began  to  take  a  wider 
sweep.  The  relation  between  art  and  religion  exercised  him.  His  mind  was 
naturally  devout.  Thomas  k  Kempis  was  his  constant  comj)anion.  "  Rejoice  in 
nothing  but  a  good  deed  ;  "  "  Through  labor  to  rest,  through  combat  to  victory  ;  " 
"The  glory  which  men  give  and  take  is  transitory,"  these  and  like  phrases  were 
already  deeply  engraven  on  the  fleshly  tablets  of  his  heart.  Amid  all  his  glow- 
ing triumphs  he  was  developing  a  curious  disinclination  to  appear  in  public  ;  he 
seemed  to  yearn  for  solitude  and  meditation. 

In  1827  he  again  hurried  to  England  for  a  short  time,  but  his  father's 
sudden  illness  drove  them  to  Boulogne,  where,  in  his  forty-seventh  year,  died 
Adam  Liszt,  leaving  the  young  Franz  for  the  first  time  in  his  life,  at  the  early 
age  of  sixteen,  unprotected  and  alone.  Rousing  himself  from  the  bodily  prostra- 
tion and  torpor  of  grief  into  which  he  had  been  thrown  by  the  death  of  his  father, 
Franz,  with  admirable  energy  and  that  high  sense  of  honor  which  always  dis- 
tinguished him,  began  to  set  his  house  in  order.  He  called  in  all  his  debts,  sold 
his  magnificent  grand  "  Erard,"  and  left  Boulogne  for  Paris  with  a  heavy  heart 
and  a  light  pocket,  but  not  owing  a  sou. 

He  sent  for  his  mother,  and  for  the  next  twelve  years,  1 828-1 840,  the  two 
lived  together,  chiefly  in  Paris.  There,  as  a  child,  he  had  been  a  nine  days'  won- 
der, but  the  solidity  of  his  reputation  was  now  destined  to  go  hand  in  hand  with 
his  stormy  and  interrupted  mental  and  moral  development.  Such  a  plant  could 
not  come  to  maturity  all  at  once.  No  drawing-room  or  concert-room  success  sat- 
isfied a  heart  for  which  the  world  of  human  emotion  seemed  too  small,  and  an 
intellect  piercing  with  intuitive  intelligence  into  the  "  clear-obscure "  depths  of 
religion  and  philosophy. 

But  Franz  was  young,  and  Franz  was  poor,  and  his  mother  had  to  be  sup- 
ported. She  was  his  first  care.  Systematically,  he  labored  to  put  by  a  sum 
which  would  assure  her  of  a  competency,  and  often  with  his  tender  genial  smile 
he  would  remind  her  of  his  own  childish  words,  "God  will  help  me  to  repay  you 
for  all  that  you  have  done  for  me."  Still  he  labored,  often  wofully  against  the 
grain.  "  Poverty,"  he  writes,  "  that  old  mediator  between  man  and  evil,  tore 
me  from  my  solitude  devoted  to  meditation,  and  placed  me  before  a  public  on 
whom  not  only  my  own  but  my  own  mother's  existence  depended.  Young  and 
over-strained,  1  suffered  painfully  under  the  contact  with  external  things  which 
my  vocation  as  a  musician  brought  with  it,  and  which  wounded  me  all  the  more 
intensely  that  my  heart  at  this  time  was  filled  entirely  with  the  mystical  feelings 
of  love  and  religion." 

Of  course  the  gifted  young  pianist's  connection  grew  rapidly.  He  got  his 
twenty  francs  a  lesson  at  the  best  houses  ;  he  was  naturally  a  welcome  guest,  and 
from  the  first  seemed  to  have  the  run  of  high  Parisian  society.  His  life  was 
feverish,  his  activity  irregular,  his  health  far  from  strong  ;  but  the  vulgar  tempta- 
tions of  the  gay  capital  seemed  to  have  little  attraction  for  his  noble  nature. 
His  heart  remained  unspoiled.     He  was  most  generous  to  those  who  could  not 


little  tired  of  praise,  and 


ii. 


"^"^  '  '-     mill 


ivempis 

Ji  labor  t 
give  aad  lake  is  transilvjiv, 
'  op.  the  fleshly  tablets  of  '' 
oping  a  curious  disinci: 
solitude  and  meditation, 
ain   hurried   to    F 
M  -\e  them  to  Boi''  ^ 
ving  the  young  T- 
n,  unprotected  an^ 
uuu  torpor  of  grief  into  which  he 

'      ".'ith    adf!"''''"'' ■'■'     '■rt.riry    nn.'     +!i 

H  him. 


to  take  a  wider 
His  mind  uivs 
'"omp  iM^on.      "  Rejoice  in 
ictory  ;" 


L  U         \    \,IM 


ana 


■■hort  time,  bii 
■'     forty-seven  1 1 

•n  hi?  life,  at  the  early 

)dily  prostra- 

tiic  Ucalh  of  his  father, 

.  .  r  which   always  dis- 

n  all  his  debts,  sold 


won- 


TSaiJ    S.7LAH1 


intellect 


ith  intuitive   mtelligence  into  the  "clear-ob.-  lepths  of 


But  F- 
ported. 

which  would  assure  her 
he  woul  ' 
for  all  I. 
grain. 
me  fron 


....   ..dL-  J-.   ...  ..,.-.   ,.i.         'UfT-  Iti.i  )o  be  sup- 

Sj'Stematically,  he  la:  -v  a  sum 

npetency,  and  often  with  his  ten  lial  smile 

'11  help  cpay  you 


'II     \','/  , 


ui  and 
before  a  pub 


:-.luncc 


MIS  tim 

Imgs 

got   his 

uest,  and 

the  run  of  high 

life  was 

iiis  health  far  f' 

.:.  lae  vulgar  tempta- 

icd  to  have  lili. 

.   .ur  his  noble  nature. 

)oiled.     He  was  most  ge; 

0  those  who  could  not 

cZi?'i''i<^/ri^ -j^d^.A.-'S^rtr,^iAy<}ri    -U<fY>^M//y. 


<y 


(Tiivire    C'0\ipil  ft-  i" 


FRANZ    LISZT  335 

afford  to  pay  for  his  lessons,  most  pitiful  to  the  poor,  most  dutiful  and  affection- 
ate to  his  mother.  Coming  home  late  from  some  grand  entertainment,  he  would 
sit  outside  on  the  staircase  till  morning,  sooner  than  awaken,  or  perhaps  alarm, 
her  by  letting  himself  in.  But  in  losing  his  father  he  seemed  to  have  lost  a  cer- 
tain method  and  order.  His  meals  were  irregular,  so  were  his  lessons  ;  more  so 
were  the  hours  devoted  to  sleep. 

At  this  time  he  was  hardly  twenty  ;  we  are  not  surprised  anon  to  hear  in  his 
own  words,  of  "  a  female  form  chaste,  and  pure  as  the  alabaster  of  holy  vessel," 
but  he  adds  :  "  Such  was  the  sacrifice  which  I  offered  with  tears  to  the  God  of 
Christians  ! " 

I  will  explain.  Mile.  Caroline  St.  Cricq  was  just  seventeen,  lithe,  slender, 
and  of  "angelic"  beauty,  with  a  complexion  like  a  lily  flushed  with  roses,  open, 
"  impressionable  to  beauty,  to  the  world,  to  religion,  to  God."  The  countess, 
her  mother,  appears  to  have  been  a  charming  woman,  very  partial  to  Liszt,  whom 
she  engaged  to  instruct  Mademoiselle  in  music.  The  lessons  went  not  by  time, 
but  by  inclination.  The  young  man's  eloquence,  varied  knowledge,  ardent  love 
of  literature,  and  flashing  genius  won  both  the  mother  and  daughter.  Not  one 
of  them  seemed  to  suspect  the  whirlpool  of  grief  and  death  to  which  they  were 
hurrying.  The  countess  fell  ill  and  died,  but  not  before  she  had  recommended 
Liszt  to  the  Count  St.  Cricq  as  a  possible  suitor  for  the  hand  of  Mademoiselle. 

The  haughty  diplomat,  St.  Cricq,  at  once  put  his  foot  down.  The  funeral 
over,  Liszt's  movements  were  watched.  They  were  innocent  enough.  He  was 
already  an  enfant  de  la  maison,  but  one  night  he  lingered  reading  aloud  some 
favorite  author  to  Mademoiselle  a  little  too  late.  He  was  reported  by  the  ser- 
vants, and  received  his  polite  dismissal  as  music  master.  In  an  interview  with 
the  count  his  own  pride  was  deeply  wounded.  "  Difference  of  rank  !  "  said  the 
count.  That  was  quite  enough  for  Liszt.  He  rose,  pale  as  death,  with  quiver- 
ing lip,  but  uttered  not  a  word.  As  a  man  of  honor  he  had  but  one  couree.  He 
and  Caroline  parted  forever.  She  contracted  later  an  uncongenial  marriage  ;  he 
seems  to  have  turned  with  intense  ardor  to  religion.  His  good  mother  used  to 
complain  to  those  who  came  to  inquire  for  him  that  he  was  all  day  long  in  church, 
and  had  ceased  to  occupy  himself,  as  he  should,  with  music. 

It  was  toward  the  close  of  1831  that  Liszt  met  Chopin  in  Paris.  From  the 
first,  these  two  men,  so  different,  became  fast  friends.  Chopin's  delicate,  retiring 
soul  found  a  singular  delight  in  Liszt's  strong  and  imposing  personality.  Liszt's 
exquisite  perception  enabled  him  perfectly  to  live  in  the  strange  dreamland  of 
Chopin's  fancies,  while  his  own  vigor  inspired  Chopin  with  nerve  to  conceive 
"those  mighty  Polonaises  that  he  could  never  properly  play  himself,  and  which 
he  so  gladlv  committed  to  the  keeping  of  his  prodigious  friend.  Liszt  undertook 
the  task  of  interpreting  Chopin  to  the  mixed  crowds  which  he  revelled  in  sub- 
duing, but  from  which  his  fastidious  and  delicately  strung  friend  shrank  with 
something  like  aversion. 

From  Chopin,  Liszt  and  all  the  world  after  him  got  that  tc7npo  rudato,  that 
playing  with  the  duration  of  notes  without  breaking  the  time,  and  those  arabesque 


836  ARTISTS  AND   AUTHORS 

ornaments  which  are  woven  like  fine  embroidery  all  about  the  pages  of  Chopin's 
nocturnes,  and  lift  what  in  others  are  mere  casual  flourishes  into  the  dignity  of 
interpretative  phrases  and  poetic  commentaries  on  the  text. 

People  were  fond  of  comparing  the  two  young  men  who  so  often  appeared 
m  the  same  salons  together — Liszt  with  his  finely  shaped,  long,  oval  head  and 
profit  d'ivoirc,  set  proudly  on  his  shoulders,  his  stiff  hair  of  dark  blonde  thrown 
back  from  the  forehead  without  a  parting,  and  cut  in  a  straight  line,  his  aplomb, 
his  magnificent  and  courtly  bearing,  his  ready  tongue,  his  flashing  wit  and  fine 
irony,  his  genial  bonhomie  and  irresistibly  winning  smile  ;  and  Chopin,  also,  with 
dark  blonde  hair,  but  soft  as  silk,  parted  on  one  side,  to  use  Liszt's  own  words, 
"An  angel  of  fair  countenance,  with  brown  eyes  from  which  intellect  beamed 
rather  than  burned  ;  a  gentle,  refined  smile,  slightly  aquiline  nose  ;  a  delicious, 
clear,  almost  diaphanous  complexion,  all  bearing  witness  to  the  harmony  of  a 
soul  which  required  no  commentary  beyond  itself." 

Nothing  can  be  more  generous  or  more  true  than  Liszt's  recognition  of  Cho- 
pin's independent  support.  "  To  our  endeavors,"  he  says,  "  to  our  struggles,  just 
then  so  much  needing  certainty,  he  lent  us  the  support  of  a  calm,  unshakable 
conviction,  equally  armed  against  apathy  and  cajolery."  There  was  only  one 
picture  on  the  walls  of  Chopin's  room ;  it  hung  just  above  his  piano.  It  was  a 
head  of  Liszt. 

It  is  no  part  of  my  present  scheme  to  describe  the  battle  which  romanticism  in 
music  waged  against  the  prevalent  conventionalities.  We  know  the  general  out- 
come of  the  struggle  culminating,  after  the  most  prodigious  artistic  convulsions, 
in  the  musical  supremacy  of  Richard  Wagner,  who  certainly  marks  firmly  and 
broadly  enough  the  greatest  stride  in  musical  development  made  since  Beethoven. 

In  1842  Liszt  visited  Weimar,  Berlin,  and  then  went  to  Paris  ;  he  was  medi- 
tating a  tour  in  Russia.  Pressing  invitations  reached  him  from  St.  Petersburg 
•and  Moscow.  The  most  fabulous  accounts  of  his  virtuosity  had  raised  expecta- 
tion to  its  highest  pitch.  He  was  as  legendary  even  among  the  common  people 
as  Paganini.  His  first  concert  at  St.  Petersburg  realized  the  then  unheard-of 
sum  of  ^2,000.  The  roads  were  crowded  to  see  him  pass,  and  the  corridors  and 
approaches  to  the  Grand  Opera  blocked  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  him.  The  same 
scenes  were  repeated  at  Moscow,  where  he  gave  six  concerts  without  exhausting 
the  popular  excitement. 

On  his  return  to  Weimar  he  accepted  the  post  of  Capellmeister  to  the  Grand 
Duke.  It  provided  him  with  that  settled  abode,  and  above  all  with  an  orchestra, 
which  he  now  felt  so  indispensable  to  meet  his  growing  passion  for  orchestral 
composition.      But  the  time  of  rest  had  not  yet  come. 

In  1844  and  1845  he  was  received  in  Spain  and  Portugal  with  incredible  en- 
thusiasm, after  which  he  returned  to  Bonn  to  assist  at  the  inauguration  of  Beet- 
hoven's statue.  With  boundless  liberality,  he  had  subscribed  more  money  than 
all  the  princes  and  people  of  Germany  put  together,  to  make  the  statue  worthy  of 
the  occasion  and  the  occasion  worthy  of  the  statue. 

The  golden  river  which  poured  into  him  from  all  the  capitals  of  Europe  now 


FRANZ   LISZT  337 

freely  found  a  new  vent  in  boundless  generosity.  Hospitals,  poor  and  needy, 
patriotic  celebrations,  the  dignity  and  interests  of  art,  were  all  subsidized  from  his 
private  purse.  His  transcendent  virtuosity  was  only  equalled  by  his  splendid 
munificence  ;  but  he  found — what  others  have  so  often  experienced — that  great 
personal  gifts  and  prodigious  dclat  cannot  possibly  escape  the  poison  of  envy  and 
detraction.  He  was  attacked  by  calumny  ;  his  gifts  denied  and  ridiculed  ;  his 
munificence  ascribed  to  vainglory,  and  his  charity  to  pride  and  ostentation  ;  yet 
none  will  ever  know  the  extent  of  his  private  charities,  and  no  one  who  knows  any- 
thing of  Liszt  can  be  ignorant  of  the  simple,  unaffected  goodness  of  heart  which 
prompted  them. 

Still  he  was  wounded  by  ingratitude  and  abuse.  It  seemed  to  check  and 
paralyze  for  the  moment  his  generous  nature.  Fetis  saw  him  at  Coblenz  soon 
after  the  Bonn  festival,  at  which  he  had  expended  such  vast  sums.  He  was 
sitting  alone,  dejected  and  out  of  health.  He  said  he  was  sick  of  everything, 
tired  of  life,  and  nearly  ruined.  But  that  mood  never  lasted  long  with  Liszt ; 
he  soon  arose  and  shook  himself  like  a  lion.  His  detractors  slunk  away  into 
their  holes,  and  he  walked  forth  victorious  to  refill  his  empty  purse  and  reap 
new  laurels. 

His  career  was  interrupted  by  the  stormy  events  of  1848.  He  settled  down 
for  a  time  at  Weimar,  and  it  was  then  that  he  began  to  take  that  warm  interest 
in  Richard  Wagner  which  ended  in  the  closest  and  most  enduring  of  friendships. 

He  labored  incessantly  to  get  a  hearing  for  the  "Lohengrin"  and  "Tann- 
hauser."  He  forced  Wagner's  compositions  on  the  band,  on  the  grand-duke  ; 
he  breasted  public  opposition  and  fought  nobly  for  the  eccentric  and  obscure 
person  who  was  chiefly  known  as  a  political  outlaw  and  an  inventor  of  extrava- 
gant compositions  which  it  was  impossible  to  play  or  sing,  and  odiously  unpleas- 
ant to  listen  to.  But  years  of  faithful  service,  mainly  the  service  and  immense 
prestige  and  authority  of  Liszt,  procured  Wagner  a  hearing,  and  paved  the  way 
for  his  glorious  triumphs  at  Bayreuth  in  1876,  1882,  and  1883. 

I  have  preferred  to  confine  myself  in  this  article  to  the  personality  of  Liszt, 
and  have  made  no  allusion  to  his  orchestral  works  and  oratorio  compositions. 
The  "  Symphonic  Poems  "  speak  for  themselves — magnificent  renderings  of  the 
inner  fife  of  spontaneous  emotion — but  subject-matter  which  calls  for  a  special 
article  can  find  no  place  at  the  fag-end  of  this,  and  at  all  times  it  is  better  to  hear 
music  than  to  describe  it.  As  it  would  be  impossible  to  describe  Liszt's  orches- 
tration intelligibly  to  those  who  have  not  heard  it,  and  unnecessary  to  those  who 
have,  I  will  simply  leave  it  alone. 

I  saw  Liszt  but  six  times,  and  then  only  between  the  years  1876  and  1881.  I 
heard  him  play  upon  two  occasions  only,  and  then  he  played  certain  pieces  of 
Chopin  at  my  request  and  a  new  composition  by  himself.  I  have  heard  Mme. 
Schumann,  Billow,  Rubenstein,  Menter,  and  Esipoff,  but  I  can  understand  that 
saying  of  Tausig,  himself  one  of  the  greatest  masters  of  technique  whom  Ger- 
many has  ever  produced  :  "  No  mortal  can  measure  himself  with  Liszt.  He 
dwells  alone  upon  a  solitary  height." 

23 


338 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


RICHARD    WAGNER 

By   Franklin  Peterson,   Mus.  Bag, 
(1813-1S83) 

RICHARD  Wagner's  personality  has  been  so  overshad- 
owed by  and  almost  merged  in  the  great  contro- 
versy which  his  schemes  of  reform  in  opera  raised,  that 
his  life  and  character  are  often  now  sorely  misjudged — 
just  as  his  music  long  was — by  those  who  have  not  the 
time,  the  inclination,  or  the  ability  to  understand  the  facts 
and  the  issues.  Before  briefly  stating  then  the  theories 
he  propounded  and  their  development,  as  shown  in  suc- 
cessive music  dramas,  it  will  be  well  to  summarize  the 
story  of  a  life  (1813-83)  during  which  he  was  called  to 
endure  so  much  vicissitude,  trial  and  temptation,  suffer- 
ing and  defeat. 

Born  in  Leipsic,  on  May  22,  181 3,  the  youngest  of  nine  children,  Wilhelm 
Richard  was  only  five  months  old  when  his  father  died.  His  mother's  second 
marriage  entailed  a  removal  to  Dresden,  where,  at  the  Kreuzschule,  young  Wag- 
ner received  an  excellent  liberal  education.  At  the  age  of  thirteen  the  bent  of 
his  taste,  as  well  as  his  diligence,  was  shown  by  his  translation  (out  of  school 
hours)  of  the  first  twelve  books  of  the  "  Odyssey."  In  the  following  year  his 
passion  for  poetry  found  expression  in  a  grand  tragedy.  "  It  was  a  mixture,"  he 
says,  "  of  Hamlet  and  Lear.  Forty-two  persons  died  in  the  course  of  the  play, 
and,  for  want  of  more  characters,  I  had  to  make  some  of  them  reappear  as  ghosts 
in  the  last  act."  Weber,  who  was  then  conductor  of  the  Dresden  opera,  seems  to 
have  attracted  the  boy  both  by  his  personality  and  by  his  music  ;  but  it  was  Beet- 
hoven's music  which  gave  him  his  real  inspiration.  From  1830  to  1833  many 
compositions  after  standard  models  are  evidence  of  hard  and  systematic  work  ; 
and  in  1833  he  began  his  long  career  as  an  operatic  composer  with  "  Die  Feen," 
which,  however,  never  reached  the  dignity  of  performance  till  1888 — five  years 
after  Wagner's  death.  After  some  time  spent  in  very  unremunerative  routine 
work  in  Heidelberg,  Konigsberg,  and  Riga  (where  in  1836  he  married),  he  re- 
solved, in  1839,  to  try  his  fortune  in  Paris  with  "  Rienzi,"  a  new  opera,  written 
on  the  lines  of  the  Paris  Grand  Opera  and  with  all  its  great  resources  in  view. 
From  the  month's  terrific  storm  in  the  North  Sea,  through  which  the  vessel 
struggled  to  its  haven,  till  the  spring  of  1S42,  when  Wagner  left  Paris  with  "  Ri- 
enzi" unperformed,  heartsick  with  hope  deferred,  his  lot  was  a  hard  and  bitter 
one.  Berlioz,  in  similar  straits,  supported  himself  by  singing  in  the  chorus  of  a 
second-rate  theatre.  Wagner  was  refused  even  that  humble  post.  In  1842 
"  Rienzi "  was  accepted  at  Dresden,  and  its  signal  success  led  to  his  appointment 


RICHARD    WAGNER  339 

as  Capellmeister  there  (January,  1843).  I"  the  following  year  the  "  Flying 
Dutchman  "  was  not  so  enthusiastically  received,  but  it  has  since  easily  distanced 
the  earlier  work  in  popular  favor.  The  stor)'  was  suggested  to  his  mind  during 
the  stormy  voyage  from  Riga  ;  and  it  is  a  remarkable  fact  that  the  wonderful 
tone-picture  of  Norway's  storm-beaten  shore  was  painted  by  one  who,  till  that 
voyage,  had  never  set  eyes  on  the  sea.  In  1845  his  new  opera,  "  Tannhiiuser," 
proved  at  first  a  comparative  failure.  The  subject,  one  which  had  been  proposed 
to  Weber  in  18 14,  attracted  Wagner  while  he  was  in  Paris,  and  during  his  studies 
for  the  libretto  he  found  also  the  first  suggestions  of  "  Lohengrin  "  and  "  Parsi- 
fal." The  temporary  failure  of  the  opera  led  him  to  the  consideration  and  self- 
examination  which  resulted  in  the  elaborate  exposition  of  his  ideal  (in  "Opera 
and  Drama,"  and  many  other  essays).  "  I  saw  a  single  possibility  before  me,"  he 
writes,  "  to  induce  the  public  to  understand  and  participate  in  my  aims  as  an 
artist."  "Lohengrin"  was  finished  early  in  1848,  and  also  the  poem  of  "  Sieg- 
fried's Tod,"  the  result  of  Wagner's  studies  in  the  old  Nibelungen  Lied  ;  but  a  too 
warm  sympathy  with  some  of  the  aims  of  the  revolutionary  party  (which  reigned 
for  two  short  days  behind  the  street  barricades  in  Dresden,  May,  1849)  rendered 
his  absence  from  Saxony  advisable,  and  a  few  days  later  news  reached  him  in 
Weimar  that  a  warrant  was  issued  for  his  arrest.  With  a  passport  procured  by 
Liszt  he  fled  across  the  frontier,  and  for  nearly  twelve  years  the  bitterness  of  exile 
was  added  to  the  hardships  of  poverty.  It  is  this  period  which  is  mainly  respon- 
sible for  Wagner's  polemical  writings,  so  biting  in  their  sarcasm,  and  often  unfair 
in  their  attacks.  He  was  a  good  hater  ;  one  of  the  most  fiendish  pamphlets  in 
existence  is  the  "Capitulation  "  (1871),  in  which  Wagner,  safe  from  poverty 
(thanks  to  the  kindness  of  Liszt  and  the  munificence  of  Ludwig  II.,  of  Bavaria), 
and  nearing  the  summit  of  his  ambition,  but  remembering  only  his  misfortunes 
and  his  slights,  gloated  in  public  over  the  horrors  which  were  making  a  hell  of 
the  fairest  city  on  earth.  There  is  excuse  at  least,  if  not  justification,  to  be  found 
for  his  attacks  on  Meyerbeer  and  others  ;  there  are  considerations  to  be  taken 
into  account  while  one  reads  with  humiliation  and  pity  the  correspondence 
between  Wagner  and  his  benefactor,  Liszt ;  but  it  is  sad  that  an  affectionate, 
humane,  intensely  human,  to  say  nothing  of  an  artistic,  nature,  could  so  blas- 
pheme against  the  first  principles  of  humanity. 

In  1852  the  poem  of  the  "Nibelungen  Ring  Trilogy"  was  finished.  In 
1854  "  Rheingold  "  (the  introduction  of  "  Vorabend  ")  was  ready,  and  "  Die  Wal- 
kure  "  (Part  I.)  in  1856.  But  "  tired,"  as  he  said,  "  of  heaping  one  silent  score  upon 
another,"  he  left  "  Siegfried"  unfinished,  and  turned  to  the  story  of  "Tristan." 
The  poem  was  completed  in  1857,  and  the  music  two  years  later.  At  last,  in  1861, 
he  received  permission  to  return  to  Germany,  and  in  Vienna  he  had  the  first  op- 
portunity of  hearing  his  own  "  Lohengrin."  For  three  years  the  struggle  with  fort- 
une seems  tc  have  been  harder  than  ever  before,  and  Wagner,  in  broken  health, 
had  practically  determined  to  give  up  the  unequal  contest,  when  an  invitation  was 
sent  him  by  Ludwig  II.,  the  young  King  of  Bavaria — "Come  here  and  finish 
your  work."     Here  at  last  was  salvation  for  Wagner,  and  the  rest  of  his  life  was 


340  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

comparatively  smooth.  In  1865  "  Tristan  unci  Isolde  "  was  performed  at  Munich, 
and  was  followed  three  years  later  by  a  comic  opera,  "  Die  Meistersinger,"  the 
first  sketches  of  which  date  from  1845.  "Siegfried"  ("  Nibelungen  Ring,"  Part 
II.)  was  completed  in  1869,  and  in  the  following  year  Wagner  married  Cosima, 
the  daughter  of  Liszt,  and  formerly  the  wife  of  Von  Biilow.  His  first  wife,  from 
whom  he  had  been  separated  in  1861,  died  at  Dresden  in  1866. 

A  theatre  built  somewhere  off  the  main  lines  of  traffic,  and  specially  con- 
structed for  the  performance  of  Wagner's  later  works,  must  have  seemed  the 
most  impracticable  and  visionary  of  proposals  in  1870;  and  yet,  chiefly  through 
the  unwearying  exertions  of  Carl  Tausig  (and,  after  his  death,  of  the  various 
Wagner  societies),  the  foundation-stone  of  the  Baireuth  Theatre  was  laid  in  1872, 
and  in  1876,  two  years  after  the  completion  of  the  "  Gotterdammerung  "  ("  Nibe- 
lungen Ring,"  Part  III.),  it  became  an  accomplished  fact.  The  first  work  given 
was  the  entire  "Trilogy;"  and  in  July,  1882,  W^agner's  long  and  stormy  career 
was  magnificently  crowned  there  by  the  first  performance  of  "  Parsifal."  A  few 
weeks  later  his  health  showed  signs  of  giving  way,  and  he  resolved  to  spend  the 
winter  at  Venice.  There  he  died  suddenly,  February  13,  1883,  and  was  buried 
in  the  garden  of  his  own  house,  W^ahnfried,  at  Baireuth. '■' 

Wagner's  life  and  his  individuality  are  of  unusual  importance  in  rightly  es- 
timating his  work,  because,  unlike  the  other  great  masters,  he  not  only  devoted 
all  his  genius  to  one  branch  of  music — the  opera — but  he  gradually  evolved  a 
theory  and  an  ideal  which  he  consciously  formulated  and  adopted,  and .  persever- 
ingly  followed.  It  may  be  asked  whether  Wagner's  premises  were  sound  and 
his  conclusions  right ;  and  also  whether  'his  genius  was  great  enough  to  be  the 
worthy  champion  of  a  cause  involving  such  revolutions.  Unless  Wagner's 
operas,  considered  solely  as  music,  are  not  only  more  advanced  in  style,  but 
worthy  in  themselves  to  stand  at  least  on  a  level  with  the  greatest  efforts  of  his 
predecessors,  no  amount  of  proof  that  these  were  wrong  and  he  right  will  give  his 
name  the  place  his  admirers  claim  for  it.  It  is  now  universally  acknowledged 
that  Wagner  can  only  be  compared  with  the  greatest  names  in  music.  His  in- 
strumentation has  the  advantage  in  being  the  inheritor  of  the  enormous  develop- 
ment of  the  orchestra  from  Haydn  to  Berlioz,  his  harmony  is  as  daring  and 
original  as  Bach's,  and  his  melody  is  as  beautiful  as  it  is  different  from  Beethoven's 
or  Mozart's.  (These  names  are  used  not  in  order  to  institute  profitless  compari- 
sons, but  as  convenient  standards  ;  therefore  even  a  qualification  of  the  statement 
will  not  invalidate  the  case.) 

His  aim  (stated  very  generally)  was  to  reform  the  whole  structure  of  opera, 
using  the  last  or  "  Beethoven"  development  of  instrumental  music  as  a  basis,  and 
freeing  it  from  the  fetters  which  conventionality  had  imposed,  in  the  shape  of  set 
forms,  accepted  arrangements,  and  traditional  concessions  to  a  style  of  singing  now 
happily  almost  extinct.  The  one  canon  was  to  be  dramatic  fitness.  In  this 
"  Art  Work  of  the  Future,"  as  he  called  it,  the  interest  of  the  drama  is  to  depend 

*  Our  illustration  represents  him  at  Wahnfried  in  company  with  his  wife  Cosima,  her  father  Franz  Liszt, 
who  was  his  lifelong  friend,  and  Herr  von  Wolzogen. 


310 


.J      i  nstan  und  Isolde  "  was  perf-  ■"■  '  ■^•^  "'•Tunich, 

later  by  a  comic  opera,  "Die  ^;  i,"  the 

om  1845.     "Siegfried"  ("  Nibelunj^'cn  Ring,"  Part 

e  following  vear  ^"  :ricd  Cosima, 

'  -ifeof  V''-  ^■^■.-  ■■■ 

d  at  Di 

inewhen  main  lines  oi  trathc,  ,. 

rmanci  r's  later  works,  must 


;f,. 


con- 


le 


•i.   ,1.11.1  vi'^' 


.,K 


,  c;-,,  •    ..,-,.1 


o.'j:  exertion 
1  sociel  foundation-st(  aneuth  Theatre  was  laid  in  1872, 

i  ill  1876,  two  years  after  the  compklnjii    ..  liic  "Gotterdammerung  "  ("Nibe- 
,..,  p;.vv"  Part  IH  >   '"^  '  '■■    me  an  accuiriplished  fact.     The  first  work  given 
"  Tril'  ;i  July,  1S82,  Wagner's  long  and  stormy  career 

was  magnificeuLly  crowned  tl  the  first  performance  of  "  Parsifal."     A  few 

'         his  he:'       '  I  giving  way,  and  i  '-"ed  to  spend  iht 


tUl' 

8aV[3IIIT    8IH    OKA    aSMOAW 

ijia  cuuciu.-ioiib  iigla  ;  ana  miiiiif;4;,n;;    i/jaHji  will's  vvci.  ac 

worthy   ch^pion   '!'■■'■  "i-  .,,.,, ,j^-   oUch  revoluiiw.. ^..     . .  ..j^ucr's 

operas,   coMiderec  -ic,  are  not  only  more  ad\anced  in  style,  but 

worthy  in  themselves  to  stand  at  least  on  a  level  with  the  greatest  efforts  of  his 


predefeessors,  no  amoimt 
name  t'"   '■''■■■  ■■  '■■'    ■'■'"■'■<■ 
that  V, 
strume, 
ment   ol 


t  these  were  wr 

,,,..;   ,t.r  it.     It  is  nC' 
;->ared  with  the  greatt- 
.a  being  tiieir 


"11  give  his 

_,    .,,.xaowledged 

.  music.     His  in- 

)f  the  enormous  develop- 


ongma'   -^ 

or  Mo.. 

suns,  but  r.^  indard.-; 

will  iii) 

His.., 
using  the  1;) 
freeing  it  from  the  fetters 

■emeiu.- 
t.     The      .. 
^V^ork  Ol  rure,"  as  he  called 

-ation  rep  i  at  Wahnfried  in  comj' 

.;  friend,  ai»ti  Herr  von  Wolzogen. 


riK  Stat!  inent 

>•!!(  iMie  of  opera, 

.  basis,  and 

■  shape  of  set 

le  of  singing  now 

._   fitness.     In  this 

iC  drama  is  to  depend 

:3  wife  Cosima,  her  father  Franz  Liszt, 


RICHARD    WAGNER  341 

not  entirely  on  the  music,  but  also  on  the  poem  and  on  the  acting  and  staging 
as  well.  It  will  be  seen  that  Wagner's  theory  is  not  new.  All  or  most  of  it  is 
contained  in  the  theories  of  Gluck  and  others,  who  at  various  periods  in  the  de- 
velopment of  opera  consciously  strove  after  an  ideal  music  drama.  But  the 
times  were  not  ripe,  and  therefore  such  music  could  not  exert  its  proper  influ- 
ence. The  twin  arts  of  music  and  poetry,  dissociated  by  the  rapid  advance  of 
literature  and  the  slow  development  of  music,  pursued  their  several  paths  alone. 
The  attempt  to  reunite  them  in  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  was  futile,  and 
only  led  to  opera  which  never  needed,  and  therefore  did  not  employ,  great 
poetry.  In  Germany  music  was  developed  along  instrumental  lines  until  the 
school  arrived  at  its  culmination  in  Beethoven  ;  and  when  an  opera  composer 
stopped  to  think  on  the  eternal  verities,  the  result  must  always  have  been  such  a 
prophecy  of  Wagner's  work  as  we  find  in  Mozart's  letters  : 

"  October,  i  781. — Verse  indeed  is  indispensable  for  music,  but  rhyme  is  bad  in 
its  very  nature.  ...  It  would  be  by  far  the  best  if  a  good  composer,  under- 
standing the  theatre  and  knowing  how  to  produce  a  piece,  and  a  clever  poet, 
could  be  united  in  one. 

Other  but  comparatively  unimportant  features  in  the  Wagner  music  drama  are, 
e.g.,  the  use  of  the  Leitmotiv,  or  leading  motive — found  occasionally  in  Gluck, 
Mozart,  Weber,  etc.,  but  here  first  adopted  with  a  definite  purpose,  and  the  con- 
tention for  mythological  rather  than  historical  subjects — now  largely  admitted. 
But  all  Wagner's  principles  would  have  been  useless  without  the  energy  and  per- 
severance which  directed  his  work,  the  loving  study  which  stored  his  memory 
with  all  the  great  works  of  his  predecessors,  and,  above  all,  the  genius  which  com- 
mands the  admiration  of  the  musical  world. 

Wagner's  works  show  a  remarkable  and  progressive  development.  "  Rienzi  " 
is  quite  in  the  grand  opera  style  of  Meyerbeer,  Spontini,  etc.  The  "  Flying 
Dutchman  "  is  a  deliberate  departure  from  that  style,  and  in  romantic  opera 
strikes  out  for  itself  a  new  line,  which,  followed  still  further  in  "Tannhauser," 
reaches  its  stage  of  perfection  in  "  Lohengrin."  From  this  time  dates  the  music 
drama,  of  which  "Tristan"  is  the  most  uncompromising  type,  and  by  virtue  of 
wonderful  orchestration,  and  the  intense  pathos  of  the  beautifully  written  poem, 
the  most  fascinating  of  all.  The  "  Trilogy  "  ("  Walkure,"  "  Siegfried,"  "  Gotter- 
dammerung,"  with  the  "  Rheingold  "  as  introduction)  is  a  very  unequal  work. 
It  is  full  of  Wagner's  most  inspired  writing  and  most  marvellous  orchestration  ; 
but  it  is  too  long  and  too  diffuse.  The  plot  also  is  strangely  confused  and  unin- 
teresting, and  fails  alike  as  a  story  and  as  a  vehicle  of  theories,  morals,  or  religion. 
"  Parsifal,"  with  its  sacred  allegory,  its  lofty  nobility  of  tone,  and  its  pure  mys- 
ticism, stands  on  a  platform  by  itself,  and  is  almost  above  criticism,  or  praise,  or 
blame.  The  libretto  alone  might  have  won  Wagner  immortality,  so  original  is 
it  and  perfect  in  intention  ;  and  the  music  seems  to  be  no  longer  a  mere  ac- 
cessory to  the  effect,  but  the  very  essence  and  fragrance  of  the  great  conception. 


342 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


GIUSEPPE  VERDI 


(born   1813) 


G' 


lusEPPE  Verdi,  the  last  and  most 
widely  successful  of  the  school  of 
Italian  opera  proper,  was  born  at  Ron- 
cole,  near  Busseto,  October  9,  1813.  At 
ten  years  he  was  organist  of  the  small 
church  in  his  native  village,  the  salary 
being  raised  after  a  year  from  ^"i  8j. 
lod.  to  £1  i2s.  per  annum.  At  the  age 
of  sixteen  he  was  provided  with  funds  to 
prosecute  his  studies  at  the  Conservato- 
rium  at  Milan  ;  but  at  the  entrance  exam- 
ination he  showed  so  little  evidence  of 
musical  talent  that  the  authorities  de- 
clined to  enroll  him.  Nothing  daunted, 
he  pursued  his  studies  with  ardor  under 
Lavigna,  from  1831  to  1833,  when,  ac- 
cording to  agreement,  he  returned  to 
Busseto  to  take  the  place  of  his  old  teach- 
er Provesi,  now  deceased. 

After  five  unhappy  years  in  a  town 
where  he  was  little  appreciated,  Verdi  returned  to  Milan.  His  first  opera, 
"Oberto,"  is  chiefly  indebted  to  Bellini,  and  the  next,  "  Un  Giorno  di  Regno" 
(which  fulfilled  its  own  title,  as  it  was  only  once  performed),  has  been  styled 
"  Un  Bazar  de  Reminiscences."  Poor  Verdi  had  just  lost  his  wife  and  two 
children  within  a  few  days  of  each  other,  so  it  is  hardly  to  be  wondered  at  that 
a  comic  opera  was  not  a  very  congenial  work,  nor  successful!}'  accomplished. 

"  Nabucodonosor  "  (1842)  was  his  first  hit,  and  in  the  next  year  "I  Lom- 
bard! "  was  even  more  successful — partly  owing  to  the  revolutionary  feeling  which 
in  no  small  degree  was  to  help  him  to  his  future  high  position.  Indeed,  his  name 
was  a  useful  acrostic  to  the  revolutionary  party,  who  shouted  "Viva  Verdi,"  when 
they  meant  "Viva  Vittorio  Emanuele  Re  D'  Italia."  "  Ernani,"  produced  at 
Venice  in  1844,  ^'so  scored  a  success,  owing  to  the  republican  sentiment  in  the 
libretto,  which  was  adapted  from  Victor  Hugo's  "  Hernani."  Many  works  fol- 
lowed in  quick  succession,  each  arousing  the  enthusiasm  of  the  audiences,  chiefly 
when  an  opportunity  was  afforded  them  of  expressing  their  feelings  against  the 
Austrian  rule.  Only  with  his  sixteenth  opera  did  Verdi  win  the  supremacy  when 
there  were  no  longer  any  living  competitors  ;  and  "  Rigoletto  "  (185 1),  "  II  Trova- 
tore,"  and  "  La  Traviata"  (1853)  must  be  called  the  best,  as  they  are  the  last  of 


DAVID    GARRICK  343 

the  Italian  opera  school.  "I  Vespri  Siciliani"  (1855)  and  "Simon  Boccanegra" 
(1857)  were  not  so  successful  as  "  Un  Ballo  in  Maschera"  (1859);  '^'""^  none  of 
them,  any  more  than  "  La  Forza  del  Destino  "  (1S62)  or  "  Don  Carlos"  (1867), 
added  anything  to  the  fame  of  the  composer  of  "  II  Trovatore." 

Only  now  begins  the  interest  which  the  student  of  musical  history  finds  in 
Verdi's  life.  Hitherto  he  had  proved  a  good  man,  struggling  with  adversity  and 
poverty,  a  successful  composer  ambitious  to  succeed  to  the  vacant  throne  of  Ital- 
ian opera.  But  the  keen  insight  into  dramatic  necessity  which  had  gradually 
developed  and  had  given  such  force  to  otherwise  unimportant  scenes  in  earlier 
operas,  also  showed  him  the  insufficiency  of  the  means  hitherto  at  the  disposal  of 
Italian  composers,  and  from  time  to  time  he  had  tried  to  learn  the  lessons  taught 
in  the  French  Grand  Opera  School,  but  with  poor  success.  Now  a  longer  inter- 
v^al  seemed  to  promise  a  more  careful,  a  more  ambitious  work,  and  when  "  Ai'da" 
was  produced  at  Cairo  (i 871),  it  was  at  once  acknowledged  that  a  revolution 
had  taken  place  in  Verdi's  mind  and  method,  which  might  produce  still  greater 
results.     The  influence  of  Wagner  and  the  music-drama  is  distinctly  to  be  felt. 

But  Verdi  was  apparently  not  yet  satisfied.  For  sixteen  years  the  successful 
composer  maintained  absolute  silence  in  opera,  when  whispers  of  a  great  music- 
drama  roused  the  expectation  of  musical  Europe  to  an  extraordinary  pitch  ;  nor 
were  the  highest  expectations  disappointed  when  "  Otello "  was  produced  at 
Milan  in  1887.  The  surrender  of  Italian  opera  was  complete,  and  Verdi  took 
his  right  place  at  the  head  of  the  vigorous  new  school  which  has  arisen  in  Italy, 
and  which  promises  to  regain  for  the  "  Land  of  Song  "  some  of  her  ancient  pre- 
eminence in  music.  A  comic  opera  by  Verdi,  "  Falstaff,"  was  announced  in 
1892  ;  it  has  well  sustained  his  previous  reputation. 


DRAMATIC   AND   LYRIC   ARTISTS 


DAVID   GARRICK 

By  Samuel  Archer 


(1716-1779) 
;^^^?,<7^nis  celebrated  actor  was  the  son  of  Peter  Garrick,  who  had  a  cap- 


:ity,  on  rebruary 

of  his  education  at  the  grammar  school  there,  but  he  did  not  apply  himself  to 
his  books  with  much  assiduity.      He  had  conceived  a  very  early  passion  for  the- 


344 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


atrical  representation,  from  which  nothing  could  turn  him  aside.  When  he  was 
a  little  more  than  eleven  years  of  age,  he  formed  the  project  of  getting  a  play 
acted  bv  vouncr  frentlemen   and  ladies.     After  he  had  made  some  trial  of  his 

own  and  his  companions'  abilities, 
and  prevailed  upon  the  parents  to 
give  their  consent,  he  pitched  upon 
the  "  Recruiting  Officer,"  for  the 
play.  He  assembled  his  little  com- 
pany in  a  large  room,  the  destined 
place  of  representation.  There  we 
may  suppose  our  young  boy  dis- 
tributed the  several  characters  ac- 
cording to  the  merits  of  the  per- 
former. He  prevailed  on  one  of 
his  sisters  to  play  the  part  of  the 
chambermaid.  Sergeant  Kite,  a 
character  of  busy  intrigue  and  bold 
humor,  he  chose  for  himself. 

The  play  was  acted  in  a  manner 
so  far  above  the  expectation  of  the 
audience,  that  it  gave  general  satis- 
faction, and  was  much  applauded. 
The  ease,  vivacity,  and  humor  of  Kite  are  still  remembered  with  pleasure  at 
Lichfield.     The  first  stage  attempt  of  our  English  Roscius  was  in  1727. 

Not  long  after,  he  was  invited  to  Lisbon  by  an  uncle,  who  was  a  considerable 
Mv'ine  merchant  in  that  city,  but  his  stay  there  was  very  short,  for  he  returned  to 
Lichfield  the  year  following.  It  is  imagined  that  the  gay  disposition  of  the 
young  gentleman  was  not  very  suitable  to  the  old  man's  temper,  which  was,  per- 
haps, too  grave  and  austere  to  relish  the  vivacities  of  his  nephew. 

However,  during  his  short  stay  at  Lisbon,  young  Garrick  made  himself  agree- 
able to  all  who  knew  him,  particularly  to  the  English  merchants  who  resided 
there,  with  whom  he  often  dined.  After  dinner  they  usually  diverted  themselves 
by  placing  him  upon  the  table,  and  calling  upon  him  to  repeat  verses  and 
speeches  from  plays,  which  he  did  with  great  readiness,  and  much  to  the  satisfac- 
tion of  the  hearers.  Some  Portuguese  young  gentlemen  of  the  highest  rank,  who 
were  of  his  own  age,  were  also  much  delighted  with  his  conversation. 

He  afterward  returned  to  Lichfield,  and  in  1737  came  up  to  town  in  com- 
pany with  Samuel  Johnson,  who  was  to  make  so  conspicuous  a  figure  in  the  lit- 
erary world,  and  of  whose  life  we  have  already  given  an  account. 

Soon  after  his  arrival  in  London,  Garrick  entered  himself  at  Lincoln's  Inn, 
and  he  also  put  himself  under  the  tuition  of  Mr.  Colson,  an  eminent  mathemati- 
cian at  Rochester.  But  as  he  applied  himself  little  to  the  study  of  the  law,  his 
proficiency  in  mathematics  and  philosophy  was  not  extensive.  His  mind  was 
theatrically  led,  and  nothing  could  divert  his  thoughts  from  the  study  of  that  to 


DAVID    GARRICK  345 

which  his  genius  so  powerfully  prompted  him.  He  had  ^i,ooo  left  him  by  his 
uncle  at  Lisbon,  and  he  engaged  for  a  short  time  in  the  wine  trade,  in  partner- 
ship with  his  brother,  Mr.  Peter  Garrick  ;  they  hired  vaults  in  Durham  Yard,  for 
the  purpose  of  carrying  on  the  business.  The  union  between  the  brothers  was 
of  no  long  date.  Peter  was  calm,  sedate,  and  methodical ;  David  was  gay,  vola- 
tile, impetuous,  and  perhaps  not  so  confined  to  regularity  as  his  partner  could 
have  wished.  To  prevent  the  continuance  of  fruitless  and  daily  altercation,  by 
the  interposition  of  friends  the  partnership  was  amicaWy  dissolved.  And  now 
Garrick  prepared  himself  in  earnest  for  that  employment  which  he  so  ardently 
loved,  and  in  which  nature  designed  he  should  eminently  excel. 

He  was  frequently  in  the  company  of  the  most  eminent  actors ;  he  got  him- 
self introduced  to  the  managers  of  the  theatres,  and  tried  his  talent  in  the  recita- 
tion of  some  particular  and  favorite  portions  of  plays.  Now  and  then  he  in- 
dulged himself  in  the  practice  of  mimicry,  a  talent  which,  however  inferior,  is 
never  willingly  resigned  by  him  who  excels  in  it.  Sometimes  he  wrote  criticisms 
upon  the  action  and  elocution  of  the  players,  and  published  them  in  the  prints. 
These  sudden  effusions  of  his  mind  generally  comprehended  judicious  observa- 
tions and  shrewd  remarks,  unmixed  with  that  illiberality  which  often  disgraces 
the  instructions  of  stage  critics. 

Garrick's  diffidence  withheld  him  from  trying  his  strength  at  first  upon  a 
London  theatre.  He  thought  the  hazard  was  too  great,  and  embraced  the  ad- 
vantage of  commencing  his  noviciate  in  acting  with  a  company  of  players  then 
ready  to  set  out  for  Ipswich,  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  William  Gifford  and 
Mr.  Dunstall,  in  the  summer  of  1741. 

The  first  effort  of  his  theatrical  talents  was  exerted  as  Aboan,  in  the  play  of 
"  Oroonoko,"  a  part  in  which  his  features  could  not  be  easily  discerned.  Under 
the  disguise  of  a  black  countenance,  he  hoped  to  escape  being  known,  should  it 
be  his  misfortune  not  to  please.  Though  Aboan  is  not  a  first-rate  character,  yet 
the  scenes  of  pathetic  persuasion  and  affecting  distress  in  which  that  character  is 
involved,  will  always  command  the  attention  of  the  audience  when  represented 
by  a  judicious  actor.  Our  young  player's  applause  was  equal  to  his  most  san- 
guine desires.  Under  the  assumed  name  of  Lyddal,  he  not  only  acted  a  variety 
of  characters  in  plays,  particularly  Chamont,  in  the  "  Orphan  ;  "  Captain  Brazen, 
in  the  "  Recruiting  Officer  ;"  and  Sir  Harry  Wildair ;  but  he  likewise  gave  such 
delight  to  the  audience,  that  they  gratified  him  with  constant  and  loud  proofs  of 
their  approbation.  The  town  of  Ipswich  will  long  boast  of  having  first  seen  and 
encouraged  so  great  a  genius  as  Garrick. 

His  first  appearance  as  an  actor  in  London,  was  on  October  19,  1741,  when 
he  performed  the  part  of  Richard  III.,  at  the  playhouse  in  Goodman's  Fields. 
His  easy  and  familiar,  yet  forcible,  style  in  speaking  and  acting,  at  first  threw  the 
critics  into  some  hesitation  concerning  the  novelty,  as  well  as  propriety,  of  his 
manner.  They  had  been  long  accustomed  to  an  elevation  of  the  voice,  with 
a  sudden  mechanical  depression  of  its  tones,  calculated  to  excite  admiration, 
and  to  intrap  applause.     To  the  just  modulation  of  the  words,  and  concurring 


346  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

expression  of  the  features  from  the  genuine  works  of  nature,  they  had  been 
strangers,  at  least  for  some  time.  But  after  he  had  gone  through  a  variety  of 
scenes,  in  which  he  gave  evident  proofs  of  consummate  art  and  perfect  knowl- 
edge of  character,  their  doubts  were  turned  into  surprise  and  astonishment,  from 
which  they  relieved  themselves  by  loud  and  reiterated  applause.  They  were 
more  especially  charmed  when  the  actor,  after  having  thrown  aside  the  hypocrite 
and  politician,  assumed  the  warrior  and  the  hero.  When  news  was  brought  to 
Richard  that  the  Duke  'of  Buckingham  was  taken,  Garrick's  look  and  action, 
when  he  pronounced  the  words 

" -Off  with  his  head  ! 


So  much  for  Buckingham  !  " 

were  so  magnificent  and  important,  from  his  visible  enjoyment  of  the  incident, 
that  several  loud  shouts  of  approbation  proclaimed  the  triumph  of  the  actor  and 
satisfaction  of  the  audience.  Richard's  dream  before  the  battle,  and  his  death, 
were  accompanied  with  the  loudest  gratulations  of  applause. 

Such  was  the  universal  approbation  which  followed  our  young  actor,  that  the 
more  established  theatres  of  Drury  Lane  and  Covent  Garden  were  deserted. 
Garrick  drew  after  him  the  inhabitants  of  the  most  polite  parts  of  the  town  : 
Goodman's  Fields  were  full  of  the  splendor  of  St.  James'  and  Grosvenor 
Square  ;  the  coaches  of  the  nobility  filled  up  the  space  from  Temple  Bar  to 
Whitechapel.  He  had  so  perfectly  convinced  the  public  of  his  superior  accom- 
plishments in  acting,  that  not  to  admire  him  would  not  only  have  argued  an  ab- 
sence of  taste,  but  the  grossest  stupidity.  Those  who  had  seen  and  been  de- 
lighted with  the  most  admired  of  the  old  actors,  confessed  that  he  had  excelled 
the  ablest  of  them  in  the  variety  of  the  exhibitions,  and  equalled  them  all  in 
their  most  applauded  characters. 

Alexander  Pope  was  persuaded  by  Lord  Orrery  to  see  him  in  the  first  dawn 
of  his  fame.  That  great  man,  who  had  often  seen  and  admired  Betterton,  was 
struck  with  the  propriety  and  beauty  of  Mr.  Garrick's  action  ;  and  as  a  convinc- 
ing proof  that  he  had  a  good  opinion  of  his  merit,  he  told  Lord  Orrery  that  he 
was  afraid  the  young  man  would  be  spoiled,  for  he  would  have  no  competitor. 

Mr.  Garrick  shone  forth  like  a  theatrical  Newton  ;  he  threw  new  light  on 
elocution  and  action  ;  he  banished  ranting,  bombast,  and  grimace  ;  and  restored 
nature,  ease,  simplicity,  and  genuine  humor. 

In  1742  he  entered  into  stated  agreements  with  Fleetwood,  patentee  of  Drury 
Lane,  for  the  annual  income  of  ^^500.  His  fame  continued  to  increase  at  the 
royal  theatre,  and  soon  became  so  extended  that  a  deputation  was  sent  from  Ire- 
land, to  invite  him  to  act  in  Dublin  during  the  months  of  June,  July,  and  Aug- 
ust, upon  very  profitable  conditions.  These  he  embraced,  and  crossed  the  seas  to 
the  metropolis  of  Ireland  in  June,  1742,  accompanied  by  Mrs.  Woffington. 

His  success  at  Dublin  exceeded  all  imagination,  though  much  was  expected 
from  him  ;  he  was  caressed  by  all  ranks  of  people  as  a  prodigy  of  theatrical  ac- 
complishment.     During  the  hottest  days  in  the  year  the  play-house  was  crowded 


Q 

< 

X 

o 

CO 

< 

o 

QC 
OC 
< 
(3 


DAVID.  GARRICK  347 

witn  persons  of  fashion  and  rank,  who  were  never  tired  with  seeing  and  applaud- 
ing the  various  essays  of  his  skill. 

The  excessive  heat  became  prejudicial  to  the  frequenters  of  the  theatre  ;  and 
the  epidemical  distemper,  which  seized  and  carried  off  great  numbers,  was  nick- 
named the  Garrick  fever.  Satisfied  with  the  emoluments  arising  from  the  sum- 
mer campaign,  and  delighted  with  the  generous  encouragement  and  kind  coun- 
tenance which  the  nobility  and  gentry  of  Ireland  had  given  him,  and  of  which  he 
always  spoke  in  the  strongest  terms  of  acknowledgment  and  gratitude,  he  set  out 
for  London,  to  renew  his  labors  and  to  receive  the  applause  of  the  most  critical, 
as  well  as  most  candid,  audience  in  Europe. 

Such  an  actor  as  Garrick,  whose  name  when  announced  in  the  play-bill  oper- 
ated like  a  charm  and  drew  multitudes  to  the  theatre,  of  consequence  consider- 
ably augmented  the  profits  of  the  patentee.  But  at  the  time  when  all  without 
doors  was  apparently  gay  and  splendid,  and  the  theatre  of  Drury  Lane  seemed  to 
be  in  the  most  flourishing  condition,  by  the  strange  and  absurd  conduct  of  the 
manager  the  whole  fabric  was  absolutely  running  into  certain  destruction. 

His  behavior  brought  on  a  revolt  of  the  principal  actors,  with  Mr.  Garrick 
and  Mr.  Macklin  at  their  head,  and  for  some  time  they  seceded  from  the  theatre. 
They  endeavored  to  procure  a  patent  for  a  new  theatre,  but  without  success  ;  and 
Garrick  at  length  accommodated  his  dispute  with  the  manager,  Mr.  Fleetwood, 
by  engaging  to  play  again  for  a  salary  of  six  or  seven  hundred  pounds. 

In  1744,  Garrick  made  a  second  voyage  to  Dublin,  and  became  joint-man- 
ager of  the  theatre  there  with  Mr.  Sheridan.  They  met  with  great  success  ;  and 
Garrick  returned  again  to  London,  in  May,  1746,  having  considerably  added  to 
his  stock  of  money.  In  1 747  he  became  joint-patentee  of  Drury  Lane  Theatre 
with  Mr.  Lacy.  Mr.  Garrick  and  Mr.  Lacy  divided  the  business  of  the  theatre 
in  such  a  manner  as  not  to  encroach  upon  each  other's  province.  Mr.  Lacy  took 
upon  himself  the  care  of  the  wardrobe,  the  scenes,  and  the  economy  of  the  house- 
hold ;  while  Garrick  regulated  the  more  important  business  of  treating  with  au- 
thors, hiring  actors,  distributing  parts  in  plays,  superintending  of  rehearsals,  etc. 
Besides  the  profits  accruing  from  his  half-share,  he  was  allowed  an  income  of  ^500 
for  his  acting,  and  some  particular  emoluments  for  altering  plays,  farces,  etc. 

In  1749,  Mr.  Garrick  was  married  to  Mademoiselle  Violetti,  a  young  lady 
who  (as  Mr.  Davies  says),  to  great  elegance  of  form  and  many  polite  accomplish- 
ments, joined  the  more  amiable  virtues  of  the  mind.  In  1763,  1764,  and  1765, 
he  made  a  journey  to  France  and  Italy,  accompanied  by  Mrs.  Garrick,  who,  from 
the  day  of  her  marriage  till  the  death  of  her  husband,  was  never  separated  from 
him  for  twenty-four  hours.  During  his  stay  abroad  his  compan)'  was  desired  by 
many  foreigners  of  high  birth  and  great  merit.  He  was  sometimes  invited  to 
give  the  company  a  taste  of  that  art  in  which  he  was  known  so  greatly  to  excel. 
Such  a  request  he  very  readily  consented  to,  for  indeed  his  compliance  cost  him 
nothing.  He  could,  without  the  least  preparation,  transform  himself  into  any 
character,  tragic  or  comic,  and  seize  instantaneously  upon  anv  passion  of  the 
human  mind.      He  could  make  a  sudden  transition  from  violent  rage,  and  even 


348  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

,  madness,  to  the  extremes  of  levity  and  humor,  and  go  through  the  whole  circle 
of  theatric  evolution  with  the  most  surprising  velocity. 

On  the  death  of  Mr.  Lacy,  joint  patentee  of  Drury  Lane  with  Mr.  Garrick, 
in  1773,  the  whole  management  of  that  theatre  devolved  on  Mr.  Garrick.  But 
in  1776,  being  about  sixty  years  of  age,  he  sold  his  share  of  the  patent,  and 
formed  a  resolution  of  quitting  the  stage.  He  was,  however,  determined,  before 
he  left  the  theatre,  to  give  the  public  proofs  of  his  abilities  to  delight  them  as 
highly  as  he  had  ever  done  in  the  flower  and  vigor  of  his  life.  To  this  end  he  pre- 
sented them  with  some  of  the  most  capital  and  trying  characters  of  Shakespeare  ; 
with  Hamlet,  Richard,  and  Lear,  besides  other  parts  which  were  less  fatiguing. 
Hamlet  and  Lear  were  repeated  ;  Richard  he  acted  once  only,  and  by  the  king's 
command.  His  Majesty  was  much  surprised  to  see  liim,  at  an  age  so  advanced, 
run  about  the  field  of  battle  with  so  much  fire,  force,  and  agility. 

He  finished  his  dramatic  race  with  one  of  his  favorite  parts,  with  Felix,  in 
"  The  Wonder  a  Woman  Keeps  a  Secret."  When  the  play  was  ended,  Mr.  Gar- 
rick advanced  toward  the  audience,  with  much  palpitation  of  mind,  and  visible 
emotion  in  his  countenance.  No  premeditation  whatever  could  prepare  him  for 
this  affecting  scene.  He  bowed — he  paused — the  spectators  were  all  attention. 
After  a  short  struggle  of  nature,  he  recovered  from  the  shock  he  had  felt,  and 
addressed  his  auditors  in  the  following  words  : 

"  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  :  It  has  been  customary  with  persons  under  my 
circumstances  to  address  you  in  a  farewell  epilogue.  I  had  the  same  intention, 
and  turned  my  thoughts  that  way  ;  but  indeed,  I  found  myself  then  as  incapable 
of  writing  such  an  epilogue,  as  I  should  be  now  of  speaking  it. 

"The  jingle  of  rhyme  and  the  language  of  fiction  would  but  ill  suit  my  present 
feelings.  This  is  to  me  a  very  awful  moment  ;  it  is  no  less  than  parting  forever 
with  those  from  whom  I  have  received  the  greatest  kindness  and  favors,  and 
upon  the  spot  where  that  kindness  and  those  favors  were  enjoyed."  [Here  he 
was  unable  to  proceed  till  he  was  relieved  by  a  shower  of  tears.] 

"  Whatever  may  be  the  changes  of  my  future  life,  the  deepest  impression  of 
your  kindness  will  always  remain  here  "  (putting  his  hand  on  his  breast)  "  fixed 
and  unalterable.  I  will  very  readily  agree  to  my  successors  having  more  skill 
and  ability  for  their  station  than  I  have  ;  but  I  defy  them  all  to  take  more  sin- 
cere, and  more  uninterrupted  pains  for  your  favor,  or  to  be  more  truly  sensible 
of  it,  than  is  your  humble  servant." 

After  a  profound  obeisance,  he  retired,  amid  the  tears  and  acclamations  of  a 
most  crowded  and  brilliant  audience. 

He  died  on  Wednesday  morning,  January  20,  1779,  at  eight  o'clock,  without 
a  groan.  The  disease  was  pronounced  to  be  a  palsy  in  the  kidneys.  On  Mon- 
day, February  ist,  the  body  of  David  Garrick  was  conveyed  from  his  own  house 
in  the  Adelphi,  and  most  magnificently  interred  in  Westminster  Abbey,  under 
the  monument  of  his  beloved  Shakespeare.  He  was  attended  to  the  grave  by 
persons  of  the  first  rank  ;  by  men  illustrious  for  genius,  and  famous  for  science  ; 
by  those  who  loved  him  living,  and  lamented  his  death. 


EDWIN    FORREST 


349 


EDWIN   FORREST* 


By  Lawrence  Barrett 


(1806-1872) 


E' 


DwiN  Forrest  was  born  in  the  city  of 
Philadelphia,     March     9,     1806,    his 
father,  a  Scotchman,  having  emigrated  to 
America  during  the  last  year  of  the  pre- 
ceding   century.       The    boy,    like    many 
others  of  his  profession,  was  designed  for 
the  ministry,  and  before  the  age  of  eleven 
the  future  Channing  had  attracted  admir- 
ing listeners  by  the  music  of  his  voice  and 
the  aptness  of  his  mimicry.      His  memory 
was  remarkable,  and  he  would  recite  whole 
passages     of     his      preceptor's      sermons. 
Perched-upon  a  chair  or  stool,  and  crowned 
with    the    proud    approval    of  family  and 
friends,  the  young  mimic  filled  the  hearts 
of  his  listeners  with  ferv^ent  hopes  of  his 
coming  success  in  the  fold  of  their  beloved  church.     These  hopes  were  destined 
to  be  met  with  disappointment.     The  bias  of  the  future  leader  of  the  American 
stage  was  only  faintly  outlined  as  yet ;  his  hour  of  development  was  still  to 


come 


He  must  have  learned  early  the  road  to  the  theatre,  permitted  to  go  by  the 
family,  or  going,  perhaps,  without  the  knowledge  or  consent  of  his  seniors  in  the 
overworked  household  ;  for,  before  he  had  passed  his  tenth  year,  our  young  ser- 
monizer  was  a  member  of  a  Thespian  club,  and  before  he  was  eleven  he  had 
made  his  appearance  at  one  of  the  regular  theatres  in  a  female  character,  but 
with  most  disastrous  results.  He  soon  outgrew  the  ignominy  of  his  first  failure, 
however,  and  again  and  again  sought  to  overcome  its  disgrace  by  a  fresh  appear- 
ance. To  his  appeals  the  irate  manager  lent  a  deaf  car.  The  sacred  portal  that 
leads  to  the  enchanted  ground  of  the  stage  was  closed  against  young  Forrest,  the 
warden  being  instructed  not  to  let  the  importunate  boy  pass  the  door.  At  last, 
in  desperation,  he  resolved  to  storm  the  citadel,  to  beat  down  the  faithful  guard, 
and  to  carry  war  into  the  enemy's  camp.  One  night  he  dashed  past  the  aston- 
ished guardian  of  the  stage  entrance  just  as  the  curtain  fell  upon  one  of  the  acts 
of  a  play.  He  emerged  before  the  footlights,  eluding  all  pursuit,  dressed  as  a 
harlequin,  and,  before  the  audience  had  recovered  from  its  astonishment  at  this 


*  Reprinted  by  permission  of  Tlie  Cassell  Publishing  Company,  from  "  Actors  and  Actresses  of  Great  Britain 
and  the  United  States." 


350  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

scene  not  set  down  in  the  hills,  the  hafflcd,  hut  not  suhducd,  aspirant  had  dcMiv- 
ered  the  lines  of  an  epilogue  in  rhyme  with  so  much  effect  that,  before  he  could 
be  seized  by  the  astounded  stage-manager  and  hurled  from  the  theatre,  he  had 
attracted  public  notice,  successfully  won  his  surprised  audience,  and  not  only 
secured  immunity  from  punishment  for  his  temerity,  but  actually-  gained  that 
respect  in  the  manager's  estimation  which  he  had  so  long  and  so  vainly  striven  to 
acquire. 

At  last  Forrest  was  promised  an  appearance  at  the  Walnut  Street  house,  then 
one  of  the  leading  theatres  of  the  country.  He  selected  Young  Norval  in 
Home's  tragedy  of  "  Douglas,"  and  on  November  27,  1820,  the  future  master  of 
the  American  stage,  then  fourteen  years  of  age — a  boy  in  years,  a  man  in  charac- 
ter— announced  as  "  A  Young  Gentleman  of  this  City,"  surrounded  by  a  group 
of  veteran  actors  who  had  for  many  years  shared  the  favor  of  the  public,  began  a 
career  which  was  as  auspicious  at  its  opening  as  it  was  splendid  in  its  maturity. 
At  his  entrance  he  won  the  vast  audience  at  once  by  the  grace  of  his  figure  and 
the  modest  bearing  that  was  natural  to  him.  Something  of  that  magnetism 
which  he  exercised  so  effectively  in  late  years  now  attracted  all  who  heard  him, 
and  made  friends  even  before  he  spoke. 

He  was  allowed  to  reappear  as  Frederick  in  "  Lovers'  Vows,"  repeating  his 
first  success  ;  and  on  January  8,  ,1821,  he  benefited  as  Octavian  in  the  "Moun- 
taineers," a  play  associated  with  the  early  glories  of  Edmund  Kean.  In  this  year, 
also,  he  made  his  first  and  only  venture  as  a  manager,  boldly  taking  the  Prune 
Street  Theatre,  Philadelphia,  and  giving  a  successful  performance  of  "  Richard 
HI.,"  which  not  only  pleased  the  audience,  but  brought  him  a  few  dollars  of  profit. 
He  made  many  attempts  to  secure  a  regular  engagement  in  one  of  the  Western 
circuits,  where-experience  could  be  gained  ;  and  at  last,  after  many  denials,  he  was 
employed  by  Collins  and  Jones  to  play  leading  juvenile  parts  in  their  theatres  in 
Pittsburgh,  Cincinnati,  and  Lexington.  Thus,  at  the  age  of  sixteen  or  eighteen, 
Edwin  Forrest  enrolled  himself  as  a  regular  member  of  a  theatrical  company, 
and  broke  loose  from  trade  forever. 

Of  his  professional  progress  here  we  have  but  poor  accounts.  He  seems  to 
have  been  very  popular,  and  to  have  had  an  experience  larger  than  he  had  here- 
tofore enjoyed.  He  played  with  the  elder  Conway,  and  was  aff"ected  by  the 
grandeur  of  that  actor's  Othello,  a  study  which  served  Forrest  well  when  in  late 
years  he  inherited  the  character. 

Jane  Placide,  who  inspired  the  first  love  of  Edwin  Forrest,  was  an  actress  who 
combined  talent,  beauty,  and  goodness.  Her  character  would  have  softened  the 
asperities  of  his,  and  led  him  by  a  calmer  path  to  those  grand  elevations  toward 
which  Providence  had  directed  his  footsteps.  Baffled  in  love,  however,  and  be- 
lieving Caldwell  to  be  his  rival  and  enemy,  he  challenged  him  ;  but  was  rebuked 
by  the  silent  contempt  of  his  manager,  whom  the  impulsive  and  disappointed 
lover  "posted." 

The  hard  novitiate  of  Edwin  Forrest  was  now  drawing  near  its  close.  Secur- 
ing a  stock  engagement  with  Charles  Gilfert,  manager  of  the  Albany  Theatre,  he 


EDWIN   FORREST  351 

opened  there  in  the  early  fall,  and  played  for  the  first  time  with  Edmund  Kean, 
then  on  his  second  visit  to  America.  The  meeting  with  this  extraordinary  man 
and  the  attention  he  received  from  him  were  foremost  among;  the  directing  influ- 
ences  of  Forrest's  life.  To  his  last  hour  he  never  wearied  of  singing  the  praises 
of  Kean,  whose  genius  filled  the  English-speaking  world  with  admiration.  Two 
men  more  unlike  in  mind  and  body  can  scarcely  be  imagined.  Until  now  For- 
rest had  seen  no  actor  who  represented  in  perfection  the  impassioned  school  of 
which  Kean  was  the  master.  He  could  not  have  known  Cooke,  even  in  the  de- 
cline of  that  great  tragedian's  power,  and  the  little  giant  was  indeed  a  revelation. 
He  played  lago  to  Kean's  Othello,  Titus  to  his  Brutus,  and  Richmond  to  his 
Richard  HI. 

In  the  interval  which  preceded  the  opening  of  the  Bowery  Theatre,  New 
York,  Forrest  appeared  at  the  Park  for  the  benefit  of  Woodhull,  playing  Othello, 
He  made  a  pronounced  success,  his  old  manager  sitting  in  front,  profanely  ex- 
claiming, "  By  God,  the  boy  has  made  a  hit ! "  This  was  a  great  event,  as  the 
Park  was  then  the  leading  theatre  of  iVmerica,  and  its  actors  were  the  most  fa- 
mous and  exclusive. 

He  opened  at  the  Bowery  Theatre  in  November,  1826,  as  Othello,  and  made 
a  brilliant  impression.  His  salary  was  raised  from  $28  to  $40  per  week.  From 
this  success  may  be  traced  the  first  absolute  hold  made  by  Edwin  Forrest  upon 
the  attention  of  cultivated  auditors  and  intelligent  critics.  The  Bowery  was  then 
a  very  different  theatre  from  what  it  afterward  became,  when  the  newsboys  took 
forcible  possession  of  its  pit  and  the  fire-laddies  were  the  arbiters  of  public  taste 
in  its  neighborhood. 

An  instance  of  Forrest's  moral  integrity  may  be  told  here.  He  had  been  ap- 
proached by  a  rival  manager,  after  his  first  success,  and  urged  to  secede  from  the 
Bowery  and  join  the  other  house  at  a  much  larger  salary.  He  scornfully  refused 
to  break  his  word,  although  his  own  interests  he  knew  must  suffer.  His  popu- 
larity at  this  time  was  so  great  that,  when  his  contract  for  the  season  had  expired, 
he  was  instantly  engaged  for  eight  nights,  at  a  salary  of  two  hundred  dollars  a  night. 

The  success  which  had  greeted  Forrest  on  his  first  appearance  in  New  York, 
was  renewed  in  every  city  in  the  land.  Fortune  attended  fame,  and  filled  his 
pockets,  as  the  breath  of  adulation  filled  his  heart.  He  had  paid  the  last  penny 
of  debt  left  by  his  father,  and  had  seen  a  firm  shelter  raised  ov^er  the  head  of  his 
living  family.  With  a  patriotic  feeling  for  all  things  American,  Forrest,  about 
this  time,  formed  a  plan  for  the  encouragement  or  development  of  an  American 
drama,  which  resulted  in  heavy  money  losses  to  himself,  but  produced  such  con- 
tributions to  our  stage  literature  as  the  "Gladiator,"  "Jack  Cade,"  and  "  Mcta- 
mora."  *  After  five  years  of  constant  labor  he  felt  that  he  had  earned  the  right 
to  a  holiday,  and  he  formed   his  plans  for  a  two  years'  absence  in  Europe.     A 

*  Of  Forrest's  performance  of  Metamora,  in  the  play  of  that  name,  W.  R.  Alger  says,  "  Never  did  an 
actor  more  thoroughly  identify  and  merge  himself  with  his  part  than  Forrest  did  in  '  Metamora.'  He  was 
completely  transformed  from  what  he  appeared  in  other  characters,  and  seemed  Indian  in  every  particular,  all 
through  and  all  over,  from  the  crown  of  his  head  to  the  sole  of  his  foot." 


352  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

farewell  banquet  was  tendered  him  by  the  citizens  of  New  York,  and  a  medal 
was  struck  in  honor  of  the  occasion.  Bryant,  Halleck,  Leggett,  Ingraham  and 
other  distinguished  men  were  present.  This  was  an  honor  which  had  never  be- 
fore been  paid  to  an  American  actor. 

He  had  been  absent  about  two  years  when  he  landed  in  New  York  in  Sep- 
tember, 1836.  On  his  appearance  at  the  Walnut  Street  Theatre,  Philadelphia, 
he  was  received  with  unprecedented  enthusiasm.  He  gave  six  performances 
only,  on  this  occasion,  and  each  saw  a  repetition  of  the  scene  at  the  beginning  of 
the  engagement.     The  receipts  were  the  largest  ever  known  in  that  house.     . 

On  September  19,  1836,  Forrest  embarked  once  more  for  the  mother  coun- 
try, this  time  with  serious  purpose.  After  a  speedy  and  uneventful  passage  he 
reached  England,  and  at  once  set  about  the  preliminary  business  of  his  British 
engagement,  which  began  October  17,  1836.  He  was  the  first  really  great  Amer- 
ican actor  who  had  appeared  in  London  as  a  rival  of  the  English  tragedians ;  for 
Cooper  was  born  in  England,  though  always  regarded  as  belonging  to  the 
younger  country.  His  opening  part  was  Spartacus  in  the  "Gladiator."  The 
play  was  condemned,  the  actor  applauded.  In  Othello,  in  Lear,  and  in  Macbeth, 
he  achieved  instant  success.  He  began  his  engagement  October  i  7th  and  closed 
December  19th,  having  acted  Macbeth  seven  times,  Othello  nine,  and  King  Lear 
eight.  A  dinner  at  the  Garrick  Club  was  offered  and  accepted.  Here  he  sat 
down  with  Charles  Kemble  and  Macready  ;  Sergeant  Talfourd  was  in  the  chair. 

It  was  during  this  engagement  he  met  his  future  wife.  Miss  Catherine  Sin- 
clair. In  the  latter  part  of  June,  1837,  the  marriage  took  place  in  St.  Paul's 
Church,  Covent  Garden.  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Forrest  soon  after  embarked  for  Amer- 
ica. The  tragedian  resumed  his  American  engagements  November  15,  1837,  at 
the  old  Chestnut  Street  Theatre,  Philadelphia.  Presented  to  his  friends,  his  wife 
at  once  made  a  deep  and  lasting  impression.  Her  native  delicacy  of  mind  and 
refinement  of  manners  enchanted  those  who  hoped  for  some  such  influence  to  be 
exerted  in  softening  the  rough  vigor  and  democratic  downrightness  of  the  man. 
Domestic  discord  came  too  soon,  however,  and  in  an  evil  hour  for  himself,  in  an 
evil  hour  for  his  art  and  for  the  struggling  drama  in  America,  Edwin  Forrest 
threw  open  the  doors  of  his  home  to  the  scrutiny  of  the  world,  and  appealed  to 
the  courts  to  remove  the  skeleton  which  was  hidden  in  his  closet.  With  the 
proceedings  of  that  trial,  which  resulted  in  divorce,  alimony,  and  separation,  this 
memoir  has  nothing  to  do. 

Edwin  Forrest,  leaving  the  court-room  a  defeated  man,  was  instantly  raised  to 
a  popularity  with  the  masses  beyond  anything  even  he  had  before  experienced. 
He  began  an  engagement  soon  after  at  the  Broadway  Theatre,  opening  as  Da- 
mon. The  house  was  crowded  to  suffocation.  The  engagement  of  sixty  nights 
was  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  the  American  drama  for  length  and  profit. 
But  despite  the  flattering  applause  of  the  multitude,  life  never  again  had  for  him 
the  smiling  aspect  it  had  so  often  worn  before.  The  applause  which  filled  his 
ears,  the  wealth  which  flowed  in  upon  him  could  not  improve  that  temper  which 
had  never  been  amiable,  and  all  the  hard  stories  of  his  life  belong  to  this  period. 


J  111,  I' "i,'' 

P 


,i|i 


Vl'    ■'': 


W  ' 


lilllllillili 


FORREST  AS  METAMORA. 


EDWIN    FORREST  353 

On  September  20,  1852,  he  reappeared  at  the  Broadway  Theatre,  New  York. 
In  February,  1S53,  "  Macbeth  "  was  produced  in  grand  style,  with  new  scenery 
and  ajjpointments.  The  tragedy  was  played  on  twenty  consecutive  nights,  then 
by  far  the  longest  run  of  any  Shakespearean  play  in  America.  The  cast  was  very 
strong.  It  included  Conway,  Duff,  Davenport,  Pope,  Davi.dge,  Barry,  and  Mad- 
ame Ponisi. 

On  September  17,  i860,  after  an  absence  of  nearly  four  years,  Edwin  Forrest 
appeared  again  on  the  stage.  He  was  engaged  by  James  Nixon,  and  began  his 
contract  of  one  hundred  nights  at  Niblo's  Garden,  New  York,  in  the  character 
of  Hamlet.  The  long  retirement  only  increased  the  curious  interest  which  cen- 
tred round  his  historic  name.  Upon  his  opening  night  the  seats  were  sold  at  auc- 
tion. His  success  in  Philadelphia  rivalled  that  of  New  York.  In  Boston  the 
vast  auditorium  of  the  grandest  theatre  in  America  was  found  too  small  to  con- 
tain the  crowds  he  drew. 

Severe  attacks  of  gout  were  beginning  to  tell  upon  that  herculean  form,  sap- 
ping and  undermining  it  ;  and  in  1865,  while  playing  Damon  at  the  Holiday 
Street  Theatre,  in  Baltimore,  the  weather  being  very  cold  and  the  theatre  open  to 
draughts,  he  was  seized  with  a  sudden  illness,  which  was  followed  by  very  serious 
results.  Suffering  the  most  intense  agony,  he  was  able  to  get  to  the  end  of  the 
part ;  but  when  his  robes  were  laid  aside  and  physicians  summoned,  it  was  found 
to  his  horror  that  he  had  suffered  a  partial  paralvsis  of  the  sciatic  nerve.  In  an 
instant  the  sturdy  gait,  the  proud  tread  of  the  herculean  actor  was  forever  gone  ; 
for  he  never  regained  complete  control  of  his  limb,  a  perceptible  hobble  being 
the  legacy  of  the  dreadful  visitation.  His  right  hand  was  almost  powerless,  and 
he  could  not  hold  his  sword. 

In  1866  he  went  to  California,  urged  by  the  manager  in  San  Francisco. 
His  last  engagement  in  New  York  took  place  in  February,  1871.  He  played 
Lear  and  Richelieu,  his  two  greatest  parts.  On  the  night  of  March  25,  1872, 
Forrest  opened  in  "Lear"  at  the  Globe  Theatre,  Boston.  "Lear"  was  played  six 
nights.  During  the  second  week  he  was  announced  for  Richelieu  and  Virgin- 
ius  ;  but  he  caught  a  violent  cold  on  Sunday,  and  labored  sorely  on  Monday 
evening  through  the  part  of  Richelieu.  On  Tuesday  he  repeated  the  perform- 
ance, against  the  advice  of  friends  and  physicians.  Rare  bursts  of  his  old  power 
lighted  up  the  play,  but  he  labored  piteously  on  against  his  illness  and  threat- 
ened pneumonia.  When  stimulants  were  offered  he  rejected  them,  declaring 
"that  if  he  died  to-night,  he  should  still  be  his  old  royal  self." 

Announced  for  Virginius  the  following  evening,  he  was  unable  to  appear. 
A  severe  attack  of  pneumonia  developed  itself.  He  was  carried  to  his  hotel,  and 
his  last  engagement  was  brought  to  an  abrupt  and  melancholy  end.  As  soon  as 
he  was  able  to  move,  he  left  Boston  for  his  home  in  Philadelphia,  resting  on  his 
way  only  a  day  in  New  \'ork.  .Vs  the  summer  j)assed  away,  the  desire  for  work 
grew  stronger  and  stronger,  and  he  decided  to  re-enter  public  life,  but  simply  as 
a  reader  of  the  great  plays  in  which  he  had  as  an  actor  been  so  successful.  The 
result  was  a  disappointment.     On   December   11,  1S72,  he  wrote  to  Oakcs  his 

23 


354  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

last  letter,  saying  sadly,  but  fondly  :  "  God  bless  you  ever,  my  dear  and  much- 
beloved  friend." 

When  the  morning:  of  December  12th  came,  his  servant,  hearing  no  sound  in 
his  chamber  at  his  general  hour  of  rising,  became  alarmed,  opened  his  master's 
door,  and  found  there^  cold  in  death  upon  his  bed,  the  form  of  the  great  trage- 
dian. His  arms  were  crossed  upon  his  bosom,  and  he  seemed  to  be  at  rest. 
The  stroke  had  come  suddenly.  With  little  warning,  and  without  pain,  he  had 
passed  away. 

The  dead  man's  will  was  found  to  contain  several  bequests  to  old  friends  and 
servants,  and  an  elaborate  scheme  by  which  his  fortune,  in  the  hands  of  trustees, 
was  to  be  applied  to  the  erection  and  support  of  a  retreat  for  aged  actors,  to  be 
called  "The  Edwin  Forrest  Home."  The  idea  had  been  long;  in  his  mind,  and 
careful  directions  were  drawn  up  for  its  practical  working  ;  but  the  trustees 
found  themselves  powerless  to  realize  fully  the  hopes  and  wishes  of  the  testator. 
A  settlement  had  to  be  made  to  the  divorced  wife,  who  acted  liberally  toward 
the  estate  ;  but  the  amount  withdrawn  seriousl}^  crippled  it,  as  it  was  deprived  at 
•once  of  a  large  sum  of  ready  money.  Other  legal  difficulties  arose.  And  thus 
the  great  ambition  of  the  tragedian  to  be  a  benefactor  to  his  profession  was  des- 
tined to  come  almost  to  naught.  Of  this  happily  little  he  recks  now.  He  has 
parted  with  all  the  cares  of  life,  and  has  at  last  found  rest. 

Forrest's  greatest  Shakespearean  parts  were  Lear,  Othello,  and  Coriolanus. 
The  first  grew  mellow  and  rich  as  the  actor  grew  in  years,  while  it  still  retained 
much  of  its  earlier  force.  His  Othello  suffered  with  the  decline  of  his  faculties, 
although  his  clear  conception  of  all  he  did  was  apparent  to  the  end  in  the  acting 
of  every  one  of  his  parts.  Coriolanus  died  with  him,  the  last  of  all  the  Romans. 
He  was  greatest,  however,  in  such  parts  as  Virginius,  William  Tell,  and  Sparta- 
cus.  Here  his  mannerisms  of  gait  and  utterance  were  less  noticeable  than  in  his 
Shakespearean  characters,  or  were  overlooked  in  the  rugged  massiveness  of  the 
creation.  Hamlet,  Richard,  and  Macbeth  were  out  of  his  temperament,  and 
added  nothing  to  his  fame  ;  but  Richelieu  is  said  to  have  been  one  of  his  noblest 
and  most  impressive  performances.  He  was  in  all  things  marked  and  distinctive. 
His  obtrusive  personality  often  destroyed  the  harmony  of  the  portrait  he  was 
painting ;  but  in  his  inspired  moments,  which  were  many,  his  touches  were  sub- 
lime. He  passed  over  quiet  scenes  with  Jittle  elaboration,  and  dwelt  strongly 
upon  the  grand  features  of  the  characters  he  represented.  His  Lear,  in  the  great 
scenes,  rose  to  a  majestic  height,  but  fell  in  places  almost  to  mediocrity.  His 
art  was  unequal  to  his  natural  gifts.  He  was  totally  unlike  his  great  contempo- 
rary and  rival,  Macready,  whose  attention  to  detail  gave  to  every  performance 
the  harmony  of  perfect  work. 

This  memoir  may  fitly  close  with  an  illustrative  anecdote  of  the  great  actor. 
Toward  the  end  of  his  professional  career  he  was  playing  an  engagement  at  St. 
Louis.  He  was  very  feeble  in  health,  and  his  lameness  was  a  source  of  great 
anxiety  to  him.  Sitting  at  a  late  supper  in  his  hotel  one  evening,  after  a  per- 
formance of  "  King  Lear,"  with  his  friend  J.  B.  McCullough,  of  the  Globe-Demo- 


CHARLOTTE   CUSHMAN 


355 


crat,  that  gentleman  remarked  to  him  :  "  Mr.  Forrest,  I  never  in  my  life  saw  you 
play  Lear  so  well  as  you  did  to-night."  Whereupon  the  veteran  almost  indig- 
nantly replied,  rising  slowly  and  laboriously  from  his  chair  to  his  full  height : 
"  Play  Lear  !  What  do  you  mean,  sir  ?  I  do  not  play  Lear !  I  play  Hamlet, 
Richard,  Shylock,  Virginius,  if  you  please,  but  by  God,  sir,  I  am  Lear  ! " 

Nor  was  this  wholly  imaginative.  Ingratitude  of  the  basest  kind  had  rent  his 
soul.  Old  friends  were  gone  from  him  ;  new  friends  were  but  half-hearted. 
His  hearthstone  was  desolate.  The  public,  to  whom  he  had  given  his  best  years, 
was  becoming  impatient  of  his  infirmities.  The  royalty  of  his  powers  he  saw  by 
degrees  torn  from  his  decaying  form.  Other  kings  had  arisen  on  the  stage,  to 
whom  his  old  subjects  now  showed  a  reverence  once  all  his  own.  The  mockery 
of  his  diadem  only  remained.  A  wreck  of  the  once  proud  man  who  had  de- 
spised all  weakness,  and  had  ruled  his  kingdom  with  imperial  sway,  he  now  stood 
alone.  Broken  in  health  and  in  spirit,  deserted,  forgotten,  unkinged,  he  might 
well  exclaim,  "  /  aui  Lear  !  " 


CHARLOTTE    CUSHMAN 


By  Button  Cook 


(1816-1876) 


'T^HE  Pilgrim  Fathers  figure  in  American  pedi- 


grees almost  as  frequently  and  persistently, 
as  Norman  William  and  his  followers  appear  at 
the  trunk  of  our  family-trees.  Certainly,  the 
Mayflower  must  have  carried  very  many  heads 
of  houses  across  the  Atlantic.  It  was  not  in  the 
Mayflower,  however,  but  in  the  Fortune,  a 
smaller  vessel,  of  fifty-five  tons,  that  Robert 
Cushman,  Nonconformist,  the  founder  of  the 
Cushman  family  in  America,  sailed  from  Eng- 
land, for  the  better  enjoyment  of  liberty  of  con- 
science and  freedom  of  religion.  In  the  seventh 
generation  from  Robert  Cushman  appeared  El- 
kanah  Cushman,  who  took  to  wife  Mar)-  Eliza, 
daughter  of  Erasmus  Babbit,  Jr.,  lawyer,  musi- 
cian, and  captain  in  the  arm}'.  Of  this  marriage 
was  born  Charlotte  Saunders  Cushman,  in  Rich- 
mond Street,  Boston,  July  23,  18 16,  and  other  children. 

Charlotte  Cushman  says  of  herself  :  "  I  was  born  a  tom-boy."     She  had  a 
passion  for  climbing  trees  and  for  breaking  open  dolls'  heads.     She  could  not 


^.^ 


^^^ 


356  ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 

make  dolls'  clothes,  but  she  could  manufacture  their  furniture — could  do  anything 
with  tools.  "  I  was  very  destructive  to  toys  and  clothes,  tyrannical  to  brolliers 
and  sister,  but  very  social,  and  a  great  favorite  with  other  children.  Imitation 
was  a  prevailing  trait."  The  first  play  she  ever  saw  was  "  Coriolanus,"  with  Ma- 
cready  in  the  leading  part ;  her  second  play  was  "  The  Gamester."  She  became 
noted  in  her  school  for  her  skill  in  reading  aloud.  Her  competitors  grumbled  : 
"  No  wonder  she  can  read  ;  she  goes  to  the  theatre  !  "  Until  then  she  had  been 
shy  and  reserved,  not  to  say  stupid,  about  reading  aloud  in  school,  afraid  of  the 
sound  of  her  own  voice,  and  unwilling  to  trust  it ;  but  acquaintance  with  the 
theatre  loosened  her  tongue,  as  she  describes  it,  and  gave  opportunity  and  ex- 
pression to  a  faculty  which  became  the  ruling  passion  of  her  life.  At  home,  as  a 
child,  she  took  part  in  an  operetta  founded  upon  the  story  of  "  Bluebeard,"  and 
played  Selim,  the  lover,  with  great  applause,  in  a  large  attic  chamber  of  her 
father's  house  before   an  enthusiastic  audience  of  3^oung  people. 

Elkanah  Cushman  had  been  for  some  years  a  successful  merchant,  a  member 
of  the  firm  of  Topliffe  &  Cushman,  Long  Wharf,  Boston.  But  failure  befell  him, 
"  attributable,"  writes  Charlotte  Cushman's  biographer,  Miss  Stebbins,  "to  the  in- 
fidelity of  those  whom  he  trusted  as  supercargoes."  The  family  removed  from 
Boston  to  Charlestown.  Charlotte  was  placed  at  a  public  school,  remaining  there 
until  she  was  thirteen  only.  Elkanah  Cushman  died,  leaving  his  widow  and  five 
children  with  very  slender  means.  Mrs.  Cushman  opened  a  boarding-house  in 
Boston,  and  struoraled  hard  to  ward  off  further  misfortune.  It  was  discovered 
that  Charlotte  possessed  a  noble  voice  of  almost  two  registers,  "  a  full  contralto  and 
almost  a  full  soprano ;  but  the  low  voice  was  the  natural  one."  The  fortunes  of 
the  familv  seemed  to  rest  upon  the  due  cultivation  of  Charlotte's  voice  and  upon 
her  future  as  a  singer.  "  My  mother,"  she  writes,  "at  great  self-sacrifice  gave  me 
what  opportunities  for  instruction  she  could  obtain  for  me  ;  and  then  my  father's 
friend,  Mr.  R.  D.  Shepherd,  of  Shepherdstown,  Va.,  gave  me  two  years  of 
the  best  culture  that  could  be  obtained  in  Boston  at  that  time,  under  John  Pad- 
don,  an  English  organist  and  teacher  of  singing."  When  the  English  singer, 
Mrs.  Wood^better  known,  perhaps,  as  Miss  Paton — visited  Boston  in  1835  or 
1836,  she  needed  the  support  of  a  contralto  voice.  Charlotte  Cushman  was  sent 
for,  and  rehearsed  duets  with  Mrs.  Wood.  The  young  beginner  was  advised  to 
prepare  herself  for  the  operatic  stage  ;  she  was  assured  that  such  a  voice  would 
"  lead  her  to  any  height  of  fortune  she  coveted."  She  became  the  articled  pupil 
of  Mr.  Maeder,  the  husband  of  Clara  Fisher,  actress  and  vocalist,  and  the  musical 
director  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wood.  Instructed  by  Maeder,  Miss  Cushman  under- 
took the  parts  of  the  Countess  in  "  The  Marriage  of  Figaro  "  and  Lucy  Bertram 
in  the  opera  of  "Guy  Mannering."  These  were  her  first  appearances  upon  the 
stage. 

Mrs.  Maeder's  voice  was  a  contralto  ;  it  became  necessary,  therefore,  to  assign 
soprano  parts  to  Miss  Cushman.  Undue  stress  was  thus  laid  upon  her  upper 
notes.  She  was  very  young,  and  she  felt  the  change  of  climate  when  she  went 
on  with  the  Maeders  to  New  Orleans.      It  is  likely  that  her  powers  as  a  singer 


CHARLOTTE   CUSHiMAN  357 

had  been  tried  too  soon  and  too  se\-erely  ;  her  operatic  career  was  brought  to  a 
sudden  close.  Her  voice  failed  her  ;  her  upper  notes  departed,  never  to  return  ; 
she  was  left  with  a  weakened  and  limited  contralto  register.  Alarmed  and 
wretched,  she  sought  counsel  of  Mr.  Caldwell,  the  manager  of  the  chief  New 
Orleans  theatre.  "  You  ought  to  be  an  actress,  and  not  a  singer,"  he  said,  and 
advised  her  to  take  lessons  of  Mr.  Barton,  his  leading  tragedian.  Her  articles 
of  apprenticeship  to  Maeder  were  cancelled.  Soon  she  was  ready  to  appear  as 
Lady  Macbeth  on  the  occasion  of  Barton's  benefit. 

The  season  ended,  she  sailed  for  Philadelphia  on  her  way  to  New  York. 
Presently  she  had  entered  into  a  three  years'  engagement  with  Mr.  Hamblin,  the 
manager  of  the  Bowery  Theatre,  at  a  salary  of  twenty-five  dollars  a  week  for  the 
first  year,  thirty-five  for  the  second  year,  and  forty-five  for  the  third.  Mr.  Ham- 
blin had  received  excellent  accounts  of  the  actress  from  his  friend,  Mr.  Barton,  of 
New  Orleans,  and  had  heard  her  rehearse  scenes  from  "  Macbeth,"  "Jane  Shore," 
"  Venice  Preserved,"  "  The  Stranger,"  etc.  To  enable  her  to  obtain  a  suitable 
wardrobe,  he  became  security  for  her  with  his  tradespeople,  deducting  five  dol- 
lars a  week  from  her  salary  until  the  debt  was  satisfied.  All  promised  well  ;  inde- 
pendence seemed  secure  at  last.  Mrs.  Cushman  was  sent  for  from  Boston  ;  she 
gave  up  her  boarding-house  and  '  hastened  to  her  daughter.  Miss  Cushman 
writes  :  "  I  got  a  situation  for  my  eldest  brother  in  a  store  in  New  York.  I  left 
my  only  sister  in  charge  of  a  half-sister  in  Boston,  and  I  took  my  youngest 
brother  with  me."  But  rheumatic  fever  seized  the  actress  ;  she  was  able  to  act 
for  a  few  nights  only,  and  her  dream  of  good  fortune  came  to  a  disastrous  close. 
"  The  Bowery  Theatre  was  burned  to  the  ground,  with  all  my  wardrobe,  all  my 
debt  upon  it,  and  my  three  years'  contract  ending  in  smoke."  Grievously  dis- 
tressed, but  not  disheartened,  with  her  famil}'  dependent  upon  her  exertions,  she 
accepted  an  engagement  at  the  principal  theatre  in  Albany,  where  she  remained 
five  months,  acting  all  the  leading  characters.  In  September,  1837,  she  entered 
into  an  engagement,  which  endured  for  three  years,  with  the  manager  of  the 
Park  Theatre,  New  York.  She  was  required  to  fulfil  the  duties  of  "  walking 
lady  "  and  "general  utility  "  at  a  salary  of  twenty  dollars  a  week. 

During  this  period  of  her  career  she  performed  very  many  characters,  and 
toiled  assiduously  at  her  profession.  It  was  then  the  custom  to  afford  the  pub- 
lic a  great  variety  of  performances,  to  change  the  plays  nightly,  and  to  present 
two  and  sometimes  three  plays  upon  the  same  evening.  The  actors  were  for- 
ever busy  studying  new  parts,  and,  when  they  were  not  performing,  they  were 
rehearsing.  "  It  was  a  time  of  hard  work,"  writes  Miss  Stcbbins,  "  of  ceaseless 
activity,  and  of  hard-won  and  scantily  accorded  appreciation."  Miss  Cushman 
had  no  choice  of  parts ;  she  was  not  the  chief  actress  of  the  company  ;  she  sus- 
tained without  question  all  the  characters  the  management  assigned  to  her.  Her 
appearance  as  Meg  Merrilies  (she  acquired  subsequently  great  favor  by  her  per- 
formance of  this  character)  was  due  to  an  incident — the  illness  of  Mrs.  Chippen- 
dale, the  actress  who  usually  supported  the  part.  It  was  in  the  year  1840;  the 
veteran  Braham  was  to  appear  as  Henry  Bertram.     v\  Meg  Merrilies  had  to  be 


358  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

improvised.  The  obscure  "utility"  actress  was  called  upon  to  take  Mrs.  Chip- 
pendale's place.  She  might  read  the  part  if  she  could  not  commit  it  to  memory, 
but  personate  Meg  Merrilies  after  some  sort  she  must.  She  had  nev'er  espe- 
cially noticed  the  part ;  but  as  she  stood  at  the  side  scene,  book  in  hand,  awaiting 
her  moment  of  entrance,  her  ear  caught  the  dialogue  going  on  upon  the  stage 
between  two  of  the  gypsies,  "  conveying  the  impression  that  Meg  was  no  longer 
to  be  feared  or  respected — -that  she  was  no  longer  in  her  right  mind."  This  fur- 
nished her  with  a  clew  to  the  character,  and  led  her  to  present  it  upon  the  stage 
as  the  weird  and  startling  figure  which  afterward  became  so  famous.  Of  course, 
the  first  performance  was  but  a  sketch  of  her  later  portrayals  of  Meg  Merrilies, 
yet  she  made  a  profound  impression.  "  I  had  not  thought  that  I  had  done 
anything  remarkable,"  she  wrote,  "  and  when  a  knock  came  at  my  dressing-room 
door,  and  I  heard  Braham's  voice,  my  first  thought  was,  '  Now  what  have  I 
done  ?  He  is  surely  displeased  with  me  about  something.'  Imagine  my  gratifi- 
cation, when  Mr.  Braham  said,  '  Miss  Cushman,  I  have  come  to  thank  you  for 
the  most  veritable  sensation  I  have  experienced  for  a  long  time.  I  giv^e  you  my 
word,  when  I  saw  you  in  that  first  scene  I  felt  a  cold  chill  run  all  over  me. 
Where  have  you  learned  to  do  anything  like  that  ? '  " 

During  her  visits  to  England,  Miss  Cushman  personated  Meg  Merrilies  more 
often  than  any  other  character.  In  America  she  was  also  famous  for  her  per- 
formance of  Nancy,  in  a  melodrama  founded  upon  "Oliver  Twist;"  but  this 
part  she  did  not  bring  with  her  across  the  Atlantic.  She  had  first  played  Nancy 
during  her  "  general  utility  "  days  at  the  Park  Theatre,  when  the  energy  and 
pathos  of  her  acting  powerfully  affected  her  audience,  and  the  tradition  of  her 
success  in  the  part  long  "  lingered  in  the  memory  of  managers,  and  caused  them, 
ever  and  anon,  as  their  business  interests  prompted,  to  bring  great  pressure  to 
bear  upon  her  for  a  reproduction  of  it."  Mr.  George  Vandenhoff  describes 
Nancy  as  Miss  Cushman's  "greatest  part  ;  fearfully  natural,  dreadfully  intense, 
horribly  real." 

In  the  winter  of  1842  Miss  Cushman  undertook  the  management  of  the  Wal- 
nut Street  Theatre,  Philadelphia,  which  was  then  in  rather  a  fallen  state.  Under 
her  energetic  rule,  however,  the  establishment  recovered  its  popularity.  "  She  dis- 
played at  that  day,"  writes  Mr.  George  Vandenhoff — who  "  starred  at  the  Walnut 
Street  Theatre  for  six  nights  to  small  audiences" — "a  rude,  strong,  uncultivated 
talent.  It  was  not  till  after  she  had  seen  and  acted  with  Mr.  Macread)' — which 
she  did  the  next  season — that  she  really  brought  artistic  study  and  finish  to  her 
performances."  Macready  arrived  in  New  York  in  the  autumn  of  1843.  He 
notes  :  "  The  Miss  Cushman,  who  acted  Lady  Macbeth,  interested  me  much.  She 
has  to  learn  her  art,  but  she  showed  mind  and  sympathy  with  me — a  novelty  so 
refreshing  to  me  on  the  stage."  She  discerned  the  opportunity  for  study  and 
improvement  presented  by  Macready's  visit,  and  underwent  the  fatigue  of  acting 
on  alternate  nights  in  Philadelphia  and  New  York  during  the  term  of  his  en- 
gagement at  the  Park  Theatre.  Her  own  success  was  very  great.  She  wrote  to 
her  mother  of  her  great  reception  :  of  her  being  called  out  after  the  play  ;  of  the 


CHARLOTTE   CUSHMAN  359 

"hats  and  handkerchiefs  waved  tome;  flowers  sent  to  me,"  etc.  In  October, 
1844,  she  sailed  for  England  in  the  packet-ship  Garrick.  She  had  little  money 
with  her.  A  farewell  benefit  taken  in  Boston,  her  native  city,  liad  not  proved 
verv  productive,  and  she  had  been  obliged  "  to  make  arrangements  for  the  main- 
tenance of  her  family  during  her  absence."  And  with  characteristic  prudence 
she  left  behind  her  a  certain  sum,  to  be  in  readiness  for  her,  in  case  failure  in 
England  should  drive  her  promptly  back  to  America. 

No  engagement  in  London  had  been  offered  her  ;  but  she  received,  upon 
her  arrival,  a  letter  from  Macready,  proposing  that  she  should  join  a  company 
then  being  formed  to  give  representations  in  Paris.  She  thought  it  prudent 
to  decline  this  proposal,  however,  so  as  to  avoid  entering  into  anything  like 
rivalry  with  Miss  Helen  Faucit,  the  leading  actress  of  the  troupe.  She  visited 
Paris  for  a  few  days,  but  only  to  sit  with  the  audience  of  the  best  French  the- 
atres. She  returned  to  her  dull  lodgings  in  Covent  Garden,  "  awaiting  her  des- 
tinv."  She  was, fond,  in  after  years,  of  referring  to  the  struggles  and  poverty,  the 
hopes  and  the  despair,  of  her  first  sojourn  in  London.  Her  means  were  nearly  ex- 
hausted. Sally,  the  dresser,  used  to  relate  :  "Miss  Cushman  lived  on  a  mutton- 
chop  a  day,  and  I  always  bought  the  baker's  dozen  of  muffins  for  the  sake  of  the 
extra  one,  and  we  ate  them  all,  no  matter  how  stale  they  were,  and  w^e  never  suf- 
fered from  want  of  appetite  in  those  days."  She  found  herself  reduced  to  her 
last  sovereign,  when  Mr.  Maddox,  the  manager  of  the  Princess's  Theatre,  came 
to  her  with  a  proposal.  The  watchful  Sally  reported  that  he  had  been  walking 
up  and  down  the  street  for  some  time  early  in  the  morning,  too  early  for  a  visit. 
"  He  is  anxious,"  said  Miss  Cushman.  "  I  can  make  my  own  terms."  He 
wished  her  to  appear  with  Forrest,  the  American  tragedian,  then  visiting  the 
London  stage  for  the  second  and  last  time.  She  stipulated  that  she  should  have 
her  opportunity  first,  and  "  alone."  If  successful,  she  was  willing  to  appear  in 
support  of  Forrest.     So  it  was  agreed. 

Her  first  appearance  upon  the  English  stage  was  made  on  February  14,  1845  ; 
she  assumed  the  character  of  Bianca,  in  Dean  Milman's  rather  dull  tragedy  of 
"  Fazio."  Her  triumph  was  indisputable.  Her  intensity  and  vehemence  com- 
pletely carried  aw^ay  the  house.  As  the  pit  rose  at  Kean's  Shylock,  so  it  rose  at 
Charlotte  Cushman's  Bianca.  She  wrote  to  her  mother  in  America :  "  All  my 
success  put  together,  since  I  have  been  upon  the  stage,  would  not  come  near  my 
success  in  London."  The  critics  described,  as  the  crowning  effort  of  her  per- 
formance, the  energy  and  pathos  and  abandonment  of  her  appeal  to  Aldabclla, 
when  the  wife  sacrifices  her  pride,  and  sinks,  "huddled  into  a  heap,"  at  the  feet 
of  her  rival,  imploring  her  to  save  the  Hfe  of  Fazio.  Miss  Cushman,  speaking 
of  her  first  performance  in  London,  was  wont  to  relate  how  she  was  so  com- 
pletely overcome,  not  only  by  the  excitement  of  the  scene,  biit  by  the  nervous 
agitation  of  the  occasion,  that  she  lost  for  the  moment  her  self-command,  and 
was  especially  grateful  for  the  long-continued  applause  which  gave  her  time  to 
recover  herself.  When  she  slowly  rose  at  last  and  faced  the  house  again,  the 
spectacle  of  its  enthusiasm  thrilled  and  impressed  her  in  a  manner  she  couUl  never 


360  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

forget.  The  audience  were  standins: ;  some  had  mounted  on  the  benches ;  there 
was  wild  waving  of  liats  and  handkerchiefs,  a  storm  of  cheering,  great  showering 
of  bouquets. 

Her  second  character  in  London  was  Lady  Macbeth,  to  the  Macbeth  of  Ed- 
win Forrest ;  but  the  American  actor  failed  to  please,  and  the  audience  gave  free 
expression  to  their  discontent.  Greatly  disgusted,  Forrest  withdrew,  deluding 
himself  with  the  belief  that  he  was  the  victim  of  a  conspiracy.  Miss  Cushman's 
success  knew  no  abatement.  She  played  a  round  of  parts,  assisted  by  James 
Wallack,  Leigh  Murray,  and  Mrs.  Stirling,  appearing  now  as  Rosalind,  now  as 
Juliana  in  "The  Honeymoon,"  as  Mrs.  Haller,  as  Beatrice,  as  Julia  in  "The 
Hunchback."  Her  second  season  was  even  more  successful  than  her  first.  After 
a  long  provincial  tour  she  appeared  in  December,  1845,  as  Romeo  at  the  Hay- 
market  Theatre,  then  under  the  management  of  Mr.  Webster,  her  sister  Susan 
assuming  the  character  of  Juliet.  She  had  sent  for  her  family  to  share  her  pros- 
perity, and  had  established  them  in  a  furnished  house  at  Bayswater. 

Her  success  as  Romeo  was  very  great.  The  tragedy  was  played  for  eighty 
nights.  Her  performance  won  applause  even  from  those  most  opposed  to  the 
representation  of  Shakespeare's  hero  by  a  woman.  For  a  time  her  intense  ear- 
nestness of  speech  and  manner,  the  passion  of  her  interviews  with  Juliet,  the  fury 
of  her  combat  with  Tybalt,  the  despair  of  her  closing  scenes,  bore  down  all  oppo- 
sition, silenced  criticism,  and  excited  her  audience  to  an  extraordinary  degree. 
She  appeared  afterward,  but  not  in  London,  as  Hamlet,  following  an  unfortu- 
nate example  set  by  Mrs.  Siddons  ;  and  as  Ion  in  Talfourd's  tragedy  of  that 
name. 

In  America,  toward  the  close  of  her  career,  she  even  ventured  to  appear  as 
Cardinal  Wolsey,  obtaining  great  applause  by  her  exertions  in  the  character,  and 
the  skill  and  force  of  her  impersonation.  But  histrionic  feats  of  this  kind  tres- 
pass against  good  taste,  do  violence  to  the  intentions  of  the  dramatists,  and  are, 
in  truth,  departures  from  the  purpose  of  playing.  Miss  Cushman  had  for  ex- 
cuse— in  the  first  instance,  at  any  rate — her  anxiety  to  forward  the  professional 
interests  of  her  sister,  who,  in  truth,  had  little  qualification  for  the  stage,  apart 
from  her  good  looks  and  her  graces  of  manner.  The  sisters  had  played  together 
in  Philadelphia  in  "  The  Genoese  " — a  drama  written  by  a  young  American — • 
when,  to  give  support  and  encouragement  to  Susan  in  her  personation  of  the  hero- 
ine, Charlotte  undertook  the  part  of  her  lover.  Their  success  prompted  them  to 
appear  in  "  Romeo  and  Juliet."  Other  plays,  in  which  both  could  appear,  were 
afterward  selected — such,  for  instance,  as  "  Twelfth  Night,"  in  which  Charlotte 
played  Viola  to  the  Olivia  of  Susan — so  that  the  engagement  of  one  might  com- 
pel the  engagement  of  the  other.  Susan,  however,  quitted  the  stage  in  1847,  to 
become  the  wife  of  Dr.  Sheridan  Muspratt,  of  Liverpool. 

Charlotte  Cushman  called  few  new  plays  into  being.  Dramas,  entitled  "  In- 
fatuation," by  James  Kenny,  in  1845,  ^"d  "Duchess  Elinour,"  by  the  late  H.  F. 
Chorley,  in  1854,  were  produced  for  her,  but  were  summarily  condemned  by  the 
audience,  being  scarcely  permitted  indeed  a  second  performance  in  either  case. 


WATKINS    PINXIT. 


CHARLOTTE  CUSHMAN  AS  MRS.  HAULER. 


CHARLOTTE   CUSHMAN  3C1 

Otherwise,  she  did  not  add  to  her  repertorv.  For  many  years  she  led  the  life  of 
a  "star,"  fulfilling  brief  engagements  here  and  there,  appearing  now  for  a  term  in 
London,  and  now  travelling  through  the  provinces,  playing  some  half  a  dozen 
characters  over  and  over  again.  Of  these  Lady  Macbeth,  Queen  Katherinc, 
and  Meg  Merrilies  were  perhaps  the  most  frequently  demanded.  Her  fame 
and  fortune  she  always  dated  from  the  immediate  recognition  she  obtained  upon 
her  first  performance  in  London.  But  she  made  frequent  visits  to  America  ;  in- 
deed, she  crossed  the  Atlantic  "upward  of  si.xteen  times,"  says  her  biographer. 
In  1854  she  took  a  house  in  Bolton  Row,  Mayfair,  "where  for  some  years  she 
dispensed  the  most  charming  and  genial  hospitality,"  and,  notably,  entertained 
Ristori  on  her  first  visit  to  England  in  1856.  Several  winters  she  passed  in 
Rome,  occupying  apartments  in  the  Via  Gregoriana,  where  she  cordially  received 
a  host  of  friends  and  visitors  of  all  nations,  hi  1859  she  was  called  to  England 
by  her  sister's  fatal  illness ;  in  1 866  she  was  again  summoned  to  England  to  at- 
tend the  death-bed  of  her  mother.  In  i860  she  was  playing  in  all  the  chief  cities 
of  America.  Three  years  later  she  again  visited  America,  her  chief  object  being 
to  act  for  the  benefit  of  the  Sanitary  Commission,  and  aid  the  sick  and  wounded 
victims  of  the  civil  war.  During  the  late  years  of  her  life  she  appeared  before 
the  public  more  as  a  dramatic  reader  than  as  an  actress.  There  were  long  inter- 
vals between  her  theatrical  engagements  ;  she  seemed  to  quit  her  profession  only 
to  return  to  it  after  an  interval  with  renewed  appetite,  and  she  incurred  re- 
proaches because  of  the  frequency  of  her  farewells,  and  the  doubt  that  prevailed 
as  to  whether  her  "last  appearances  "  were  reallv  to  be  the  "  very  last."  It  was 
not  until  1874,  however,  that  she  took  final  leave  of  the  New  York  stage, 
amid  extraordinary  enthusiasm,  with  many  poetic  and  other  ceremonies.  She 
was  the  subject  of  addresses  in  prose  and  verse.  Mr.  Bryant,  after  an  elo- 
quent speech,  tendered  her  a  laurel  wreath  bound  with  white  ribbon  resting  upon 
a  purple  velvet  cushion,  with  a  suitable  inscription  embroidered  in  golden  letters; 
a  torchbearers'  procession  escorted  her  from  the  theatre  to  her  hotel  ;  she  was 
serenaded  at  midnight,  and  in  her  honor  Fifth  Avenue  blazed  with  fireworks. 
After  this  came  farewells  to  Philadelphia,  Boston,  and  other  cities,  and  to  these 
succeeded  readings  all  over  the  country.  It  is  to  be  said,  however,  that  incessant 
work  had  become  a  necessity  with  her,  not  because  of  its  pecuniary  results,  but  as 
a  means  of  obtaining  mental  relief  or  comparative  forgetfulness  for  a  season. 
During  the  last  five  or  six  years  of  her  life  she  was  afflicted  with  an  incurable 
and  agonizing  malady.  Under  most  painful  conditions  she  toiled  unceasingly, 
moving  rapidly  from  place  to  place,  and  passing  days  and  nights  in  railway  jour- 
neys. In  a  letter  to  a  friend,  she  writes  :  "  I  do  get  so  dreadfully  depressed 
about  myself,  and  all  things  seem  so  hopeless  to  me  at  those  times,  that  I  pray 
God  to  take  me  quickly  at  any  moment,  so  that  I  may  not  torture  those  I  love 
by  letting  them  see  my  pain.  But  when  the  dark  hour  passes,  and  I  try  to  for- 
get by  constant  occupation  that  I  have  such  a  load  near  my  heart,  then  it  is 
not  so  bad."     She  died  almost  painlessly  at  last  on  February  18,  1876. 

Charlotte  Cushman  may  assuredly  be  accounted  an  actress  of  genius  in  right 


362  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

of  her  originality,  her  vivid  power  of  depicting  emotion,  the  vehemence  and  in- 
tensity of  her  histrionic  manner.  Her  best  successes  were  obtained  in  tragedy, 
although  she  possessed  a  keen  sense  of  humor,  and  could  '  deliver  the  witty 
speeches  of  Rosalind  or  of  Beatrice  with  excellent  point  and  effect.  Her  Meg 
Merrilies  will  probably  be  remembered  as  her  most  impressive  achievement.  It 
was  really,  as  she  played  it,  a  character  of  her  own  invention  ;  but,  in  truth,  it 
taxed  her  intellectual  resources  far  less  than  her  Bianca,  her  Queen  Katherine,  or 
her  Lady  Macbeth.  Her  physical  peculiarities  no  doubt  limited  the  range  of  her 
efforts,  hindered  her  advance  as  an  actress,  or  urged  her  toward  exceptional  im- 
personations. Her  performances  lacked  femininity,  to  use  Coleridge's  word  ;  but 
in  power  to  stir  an  audience,  to  touch  their  sympathies,  to  kindle  their  enthusiasm, 
and  to  compel  their  applause,  she  takes  rank  among  the  finest  players.  It  only 
remains  to  add  that  Miss  Stebbins'  fervid  and  affecting  biography  of  her  friend 
admirably  demonstrates  that  the  woman  was  not  less  estimable  than  the  actress  ; 
that  Charlotte  Cushman  was  of  noble  character,  intellectual,  large  and  tender- 
hearted, of  exemplary  conduct  in  every  respect.  The  simple,  direct  earnestness 
of  her  manner  upon  the  mimic  scene,  characterized  her  proceedings  in  real  life. 
She  was  at  once  the  slave  and  the  benefactress  of  her  family  ;  she  was  devotedly 
fond  of  children  ;  she  was  of  liberal  and  generous  nature  ;  she  was  happiest  when 
conferring  kindness  upon  others  ;  her  career  abounded  in  self-sacrifice.  She  pre- 
tended to  few  accomplishments,  to  little  cultivation  of  a  literary  sort ;  but  she 
could  write,  as  Miss  Stebbins  proves,  excellent  letters,  now  grave,  now  gay,  now 
reflective,  now  descriptive,  always  interesting,  and  altogether  remarkable  for 
sound  sense  and  for  force  and  skill  of  expression.  Her  death  was  regarded  in 
America  almost  as  a  national  catastrophe.  As  Miss  Stebbins  writes,  "The  press 
of  the  entire  country  bore  witness  to  her  greatness,  and  laid  their  tributes  upon 
her  tomb." 


The  following  letter  of  good  counsel  from  Miss  Cushman  to  young  Mr.  Bar- 
ton is  reprinted,  by  permission  of  Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  from  the 
"  Life  and  Letters  of  Charlotte  Cushman." 

"  I  think  if  you  have  to  wait  for  a  while  it  will  do  you  no  harm.  You  seem 
to  me  quite  frantic  for  immediate  work  ;  but  teach  yourself  quiet  and  repose  in 
the  time  you  are  waiting.  With  half  your  strength  I  could  bear  to  wait  and 
labor  with  myself  to  coxio^^r fretting.  The  greatest  power  in  the  world  is  shown 
in  conquest  over  self.  More  life  will  be  worked  out  of  you  by  fretting  than  all 
the  stage-playing  in  the  world.  God  bless  you,  my  poor  child.  You  have  in- 
deed trouble  enough  ;  but  you  have  a  strong  and  earnest  spirit,  and  you  have  the 
true  religion  of  labor  in  your  heart.  Therefore  I  have  no  fears  for  you,  let  what 
will  come.  Let  me  hear  from  you  at  your  leisure,  and  be  sure  you  have  no 
warmer  friend  than  I  am  and  wish  to  be."     .     .     . 


RACHEL 


363 


RACHEL 

By  Dutton  Cook 
(1821-1858) 


IT  is  told  that  Rachel  Felix  was 
born  on  March  24,  182 1,  at 
Munf,  near  the  town  of  Aarau,  in 
the  Canton  of  Aargau,  Switzer- 
land ;  the  burgomaster  of  the  dis- 
trict simply  noting  in  his  books 
that  upon  the  day  stated,  at  the  lit- 
tle village  inn,  the  wife  of  a  poor 
pedler  had  given  birth  to  a  female 
child.  The  entry  included  no  men- 
tion of  family,  name,  or  religion, 
and  otherwise  the  event  was  not 
registered  in  any  civil  or  religious 
record.  The  father  and  mother 
were  Abraham  Felix,  a  Jew,  born 
in  Metz,  but  of  German  origin,  and 
Esther  Haya,  his  wife.  They  had 
wandered  about  the  continent  dur- 
ing many  years,  seeking  a  living 
and  scarcely  finding  it.  Several 
children  were  born  to  them  by  the 
W'ayside,  as  it  were,  on  their  jour- 
neyings  hither  and  thither  :  Sarah  in  Germany,  Rebecca  in  Lyons,  Dinah  in 
Paris,  Rachel  in  Switzerland  ;  and  there  were  other  infants  who  did  not  long  sur- 
vive their  birth,  succumbing  to  the  austerities  of  the  state  of  life  to  which  they 
had  been  called.  For  a  time,  perhaps  because  of  their  numerous  progeny,  M. 
and  Madame  Felix  settled  in  Lyons.  Madame  Felix  opened  a  small  shop  and 
dealt  in  second-hand  clothes  ;  M.  Felix  gave  lessons  in  German  to  the  very  few 
pupils  he  could  obtain.  About  1830  the  family  moved  to  Paris.  They  were 
still  miserably  poor.  The  children  Sarah  and  Rachel,  usually  carrying  a  smaller 
child  in  their  arms  or  wheeling  it  with  them  in  a  wooden  cart,  were  sent  into  the 
streets  to  earn  money  by  singing  at  the  doors  of  cafes  and  estaminets.  A  musi- 
cal amateur,  one  M.  Morin,  noticed  the  girls,  questioned  them,  interested  him- 
self about  them,  and  finally  obtained  their  admission  into  the  Government  School 
of  Sacred  Music  in  the  Rue  Vaugirard.  Rachel's  voice  did  not  promise  much, 
however  ;  as  she  confessed,  she  could  not  sing — she  could  only  recite.  She  had 
received  but  the  scantiest  and  meanest  education  ;  she  read  with  difficulty  ;  she 


364  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

was  teachinsj  herself  writina:  by  copying  the  manuscript  of  others.  Presently  she 
was  studving  elocution  under  M.  St.  Aulaire,  an  old  actor  retired  from  the  Fran- 
9ais,  who  took  pains  with  the  child,  instructing  her  gratuitously  and  calling  her 
"  ma  petite  diablesse."  The  performances  of  M.  St.  Aulaire's  pupil  were  occa- 
sionallv  witnessed  by  the  established  players,  among  them  Monval  of  the  Gym- 
nasc  and  Samson  of  the  Comedie.  Monval  approved  and  encouraged  the  young 
actress,  and  upon  the  recommendation  of  Samson  she  entered  the  classes  of  the 
Conservatoire,  over  which  he  presided,  with  Michelot  and  Provost  as  his  co- 
professors. 

At  the  Conservatoire  Rachel  made  little  progress.  All  her  efforts  failed  to 
win  the  good  opinion  of  her  preceptors.  In  despair  she  resolved  to  abandon 
altogether  the  institution,  its  classes  and  performances.  She  felt  herself  neglected, 
aggrieved,  insulted.  "  Tartuffe  "  had  been  announced  for  representation  by  the 
pupils ;  she  had  been  assigned  the  mute  part  of  Flipote,  the  serving-maid,  who 
simply  appears  upon  the  scene  in  the  first  act  that  her  ears  may  be  soundly  boxed 
by  Madame  Pernelle.  To  this  humiliation  she  would  not  submit.  She  hurried 
to  her  old  friend,  St.  Aulaire,  who  consulted  Monval,  who  commended  her  to 
his  manager,  M.  Poirson.  She  entered  into  an  engagement  to  serve  the  Gym- 
nase  for  a  term  of  three  years  upon  a  salary  of  3,000  francs.  M.  Poirson  was 
quick  to  perceive  that  she  was  not  as  so  many  other  beginners  were  ;  that  there 
was  something  new  and  startling  about  the  young  actress.  He  obtained  for  her 
first  appearance,  from  M.  Paul  Duport,  a  little  melodrama  in  two  acts.  It  was 
caljed  "  La  Vendeenne,"  and  owed  its  more  striking  scenes  to  "  The  Heart  of 
Midlothian."  After  the  manner  of  Jeanie  Deans,  Genevieve,  the  heroine  of  the 
play,  footsore  and  travel-stained,  seeks  the  presence  of  the  Empress  Josephine  to 
implore  the  pardon  of  a  Vendean  peasant  condemned  to  death  for  following 
George  Cadoudal.  "  La  Vendeenne,"  produced  on  April  24,  1837,  and  received 
with  great  applause,  was  played  on  sixty  successive  nights,  but  not  to  very 
crowded  audiences.  The  press  scarcely  noticed  the  new  actress.  The  critic  of 
\.\\Q  Journal  dcs  Ddbats,  however,  while  rashly  affirming  that  Rachel  was  not  a 
phenomenon  and  would  never  be  extolled  as  a  wonder,  carefully  noted  certain  of 
the  merits  and  characteristics  of  her  performance.  "  She  was  an  unskilled  child, 
but  she  possessed  heart,  soul,  intellect.  There  was  something  bold,  abrupt,  un- 
couth about  her  aspect,  gait,  and  manner.  She  was  dressed  simply  and  truth- 
fully in  the  coarse  woollen  gown  of  a  peasant-girl  ;  her  hands  were  red  ;  her 
voice  was  harsh  and  untrained,  but  powerful  ;  she  acted  without  effort  or  exag- 
geration ;  she  did  not  scream  or  gesticulate  unduly  ;  she  seemed  to  perceive  in- 
tuitively the  feeling  she  was  required  to  express,  and  could  interest  the  audience 
greatly,  moving  them  to  tears.  She  was  not  pretty,  but  she  pleased,"  etc. 
Bouffe,  who  witnessed  this  representation,  observed  :  "  What  an  odd  little  girl  ! 
Assuredly  there  is  something  in  her.  But  her  place  is  not  here."  So  judged 
Samson  also,  becoming  more  and  more  aware  of  the  merits  of  his  former  pupil. 
She  was  transferred  to  the  Frangais  to  play  the  leading  characters  in  tragedy,  at 
a  salary  of  4,000  francs  a  year.     M.  Poirson  did  not  hesitate  to  cancel  her  agree- 


RACHEL  365 

ment  with  him.  Indeed,  he  had  been  troubled  with  thinking  how  he  could  employ 
his  new  actress.  She  was  not  an  ingetiue  of  the  ordinary  type  ;  she  could  not  be 
classed  among  soubrettes.  There  were  no  parts  suited  to  her  in  the  light  comedies 
of  Scribe  and  his  compeers,  which  constituted  the  chief  repertory  of  the  Gymnase. 
It  was  on  June  12,  183S,  that  Rachel,  as  Camillc,  in  "  Horace,"  made  her 
first  appearance  upon  the  stage  of  the  Theatre  Frangais.  The  receipts  were  but 
seven  hundred  and  fifty  francs  ;  it  was  an  unfashionable  period  of  the  year  ; 
Paris  was  out  of  town  ;  the  weather  was  most  sultry.  There  were  many  Jews  in 
the  house,  it  was  said,  resolute  to  support  the  daughter  of  Israel,  and  her  success 
was  unequivocal  ;  nevertheless,  a  large  share  of  the  applause  of  the  night  was 
confessedly  carried  off  by  the  veteran  Joanny,  who  played  Horace.  On  June 
i6th  Rachel  made  her  second  appearance,  personating  Emilie  in  the  "  Cinna,"  of 
Corneille.  The  receipts  fell  to  five  hundred  and  fifty  francs.  She  repeated  her 
performance  of  Camille  on  the  23d  ;  the  receipts  were  only  three  hundred  francs  ! 
the  poorest  house,  perhaps,  she  ever  played  to  in  Paris.  She  afterward  appeared 
'as  Hermione  in  "  Andromaque,"  Amenaide  in  "Tancrede,"  Eriphile  in  "  Iphi- 
genie,"  Monime  in  "  Mithridate,"  and  Roxane  in  "  Bajazet,"  the  receipts  now 
gradually  rising,  until,  in  October,  when  she  played  Hermione  for  the  tenth  time, 
six  thousand  francs  were  taken  at  the  doors,  an  equal  amount  being  received  in 
November,  when,  for  the  sixth  time,  she  appeared  as  Camille.  Paris  was  now 
at  her  feet.  In  1839,  called  upon  to  play  two  or  three  times  per  week,  she  es- 
sayed but  one  new  part,  Esther,  in  Racine's  tragedy  of  that  name.  The  public 
was  quite  content  that  she  should  assume  again  and  again  the  characters  in  which 
she  had  already  triumphed.  In  1840  she  added  to  her  list  of  impersonations 
Laodie  and  Pauline  in  Corneille's  "Nicomede"  and  "  Polyeucte,"  and  Marie 
Stuart  in  Lebrun's  tragedy.  In  1841  she  played  no  new  parts.  In  1842  she  first 
appeared  as  Chimene  in  "  Le  Cid,"  as  Ariane,  and  as  Fredegonde  in  a  wretched 
tragedy  by  Le  Mercier. 

Rachel  had  saved  the  Theatre  Fran^ais,  had  given  back  to  the  stage  the  mas- 
terpieces of  the  French  classical  drama.  It  was  very  well  for  Thackeray  to  write 
from  Paris  in  1839  that  the  actress  had  "only  galvanized  the  corpse,  not  revivi- 
fied. .  .  .  Racine  will  never  come  to  life  again  and  cause  audiences  to  weep 
as  of  yore."  He  predicted  :  "  Ancient  French  tragedy,  red-heeled,  patched,  and 
beperiwigged,  lies  in  the  grave,  and  it  is  only  the  ghost  of  it  that  the  fair  Jewess 
has  raised."  But  it  was  something  more  than  a  galvanized  animation  that  Rachel 
had  imparted  to  the  old  drama  of  France.  During  her  career  of  twenty  years, 
her  performances  of  Racine  and  Corneille  filled  the  coffers  of  the  Fran^ais,  and 
it  may  be  traced  to  her  influence  and  example  that  the  classic  plays  still  keep 
their  place  upon  the  stage  and  stir  the  ambition  of  the  players.  But  now  the 
committee  of  the  Frangais  had  to  reckon  with  their  leading  actress,  and  pay  the 
price  of  the  prosperity  she  had  brought  them.  They  cancelled  her  engagement 
and  offered  her  terms  such  as  seemed  to  them  liberal  beyond  all  precedent.  But 
the  more  they  offered,  so  much  the  more  was  demanded.  In  the  first  instance, 
the  actress  beinof  a  minor,  nesfotiations  were  carried  on  with  her  father,  the  com- 


366  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

mittee  denouncing-  in  the  bitterest  terms  the  avarice  and  rapacity  of  M.  Felix. 
But  when  Rachel  became  competent  to  deal  on  her  own  behalf,  she  proved  her- 
self every  whit  as  exacting  as  her  sire.  She  became  a  societairc  in  1843,  entitled 
to  one  of  the  twcntv-four  shares  into  which  the  profits  of  the  institution  were  di- 
vided. She  w^as  rewarded,  moreover,  with  a  salary  of  forty-two  thousand  francs 
per  annum  ;  and  it  was  estimated  that  by  her  performances  during  her  cono^c  of 
three  or  four  months  every  year  she  earned  a  further  annual  income  of  thirty 
thousand  francs.  She  met  with  extraordinary  success  upon  her  provincial  tours  ; 
enormous  profits  resulted  from  her  repeated  visits  to  Holland  and  Belgium,  Ger- 
many, Russia,  and  England.  But,  from  first  to  last,  Rachel's  connection  with 
the  Frangais  was  an  incessant  quarrel.  She  was  capricious,  ungrateful,  unscru- 
pulous, extortionate.  She  struggled  to  evade  her  duties,  to  do  as  little  as  she  pos- 
sibly could  in  return  for  the  large  sums  she  received  from  the  committee.  She 
pretended  to  be  too  ill  to  play  in  Paris,  the  while  she  was  always  well  enough 
to  hurry  away  and  obtain  great  rewards  by  her  performances  in  the  provinces. 
She  wore  herself  out  by  her  endless  wanderings  hither  and  thither,  her  contin- 
uous efforts  upon  the  scene.  She  denied  herself  all  rest,  or  slept  in  a  travelling 
carriage  to  save  time  in  her  passage  from  one  country  theatre  to  another.  Her 
company  complained  that  they  fell  asleep  as  they  acted,  her  engagements  deny- 
ing them  proper  opportunities  of  repose.  The  newspapers  at  one  time  set  forth 
the  acrimonious  letters  she  had  interchanged  with  the  committee  of  the  Fran9ais. 
Finally  she  tended  her  resignation  of  the  position  she  occupied  as  socictaire  ;  the 
committee  took  legal  proceedings  to  compel  her  to  return  to  her  duties  ;  some 
concessions  were  made  on  either  side,  however,  and  a  reconciliation  was  patched  up. 

The  new  tragedies,  "Judith"  and  "  Cl^opatre,"  written  for  the  actress  by 
Madame  de  Girardin,  failed  to  please,  nor  did  success  attend  the  production  of 
M.  Romand's  "Catherine  H.,"  M.  Soumet's  "Jeanne  d'Arc,"  in  which,  to  the 
indignation  of  the  critics,  the  heroine  was  seen  at  last  surrounded  by  real  flames  ! 
or  "  Le  Vieux  de  la  Montague  "  of  M.  Latour  de  St.  Ybars.  With  better  fort- 
une Rachel  appeared  in  the  same  author's  "  Virginie,"  and  in  the  "Lucrece"  of 
Ponsard.  Voltaire's  "  Oreste  "  was  revived  for  her  in  1845  that  she  might  play 
Electre.  She  personated  Racine's  "Athalie"  in  1847,  assuming  long  white 
locks,  painting  furrows  on  her  face,  and  disguising  herself  beyond  recognition,  in 
her  determination  to  seem  completely  the  character  she  had  undertaken.  In 
1848  she  played  Agrippine  in  the  "  Britannicus"  of  Racine,  and  dressed  in  plain 
white  muslin,  and  clasping  the  tri-colored  flag  to  her  heart,  she  delivered  the 
"  Marseillaise  "  to  please  the  Revolutionists,  lending  the  air  strange  meaning  and 
passion  by  the  intensity  of  her  manner,  as  she  half  chanted,  half  recited  the  words, 
her  voice  now  shrill  and  harsh,  now  deep,  hollow,  and  reverberating — her  enrapt- 
ured auditors  likening  it  in  effect  to  distant  thunder. 

To  the  dramatists  who  sought  to  supply  her  with  new  parts,  Rachel  was  the 
occasion  of  much  chagrin  and  perplexity.  After  accepting  Scribe's  "Adrienne 
Lecouvreur "  she  rejected  it  absolutely,  only  to  resume  it  eagerly,  however, 
when  she  learned  that  the  leading  character  was  to  be  undertaken  by  Mademoi- 


RACHEL  367 

selle  Rose  Ch^ri.  His  "  Chandelier  "  having  met  with  success,  Rachel  applied 
to  De  Musset  for  a  play.  She  was  offered,  it  seems,  "  Les  Caprices  de  Mari- 
anne," but  meantime  the  poet's  "Bettinc"  failed,  and  the  actress  distrustfully 
turned  away  from  him.  An  undertaking  to  appear  in  the  "  Medea  "  of  Legouv^ 
landed  her  in  a  protracted  lawsuit.  The  courts  condemned  her  in  damages  to 
the  amount  of  two  hundred  francs  for  every  day  she  delayed  playing  the  part  of 
Medea  after  the  date  fixed  upon  by  the  management  for  the  commencement  of 
the  rehearsals  of  the  tragedy.  She  paid  nothing,  however,  for  the  management 
failed  to  fix  any  such  date.  M.  Legouve  was  only  avenged  in  the  success  his 
play  obtained,  in  a  translated  form,  at  the  hands  of  Madame  Ristori.  In  lieu  of 
"  Medea "  Rachel  produced  "  Rosemonde,"  a  tragedy  by  M.  Latour  de  St. 
Ybars,  which  failed  completely.  Other  plays  written  for  her  were  the  "  Valeria" 
of  MM.  Lacroix  and  Maquet,  in  which  she  personated  two  characters — the  Em- 
press Messalina  and  her  half  sister,  Lysisca,  a  courtesan  ;  the  "  Diane,"  of  M. 
Augier,  an  imitation  of  Victor  Hugo's  "  Marion  Delorme  ;"  "  Lady  Tartufife,"  a 
comedy  by  Madame  de  Girardin  ;  and  "  La  Czarine,"  by  M.  Scribe.  She  ap- 
peared also  in  certain  of  the  characters  originally  contrived  for  Mademoiselle 
Mars,  such  as  La  Tisbe  in  Victor  Hugo's  "  Angelo,"  and  the  heroines  of  Dumas's 
"  ALidemoiselle  de  Belle  Isle"  and  of  "Louise  de  Lignerolles"  by  MM.  Le- 
gouv^  and  Dinaux. 

The  classical  drama  of  France  has  not  found  much  favor  in  England  and 
America.  We  are  all,  perhaps,  apt  to  think  with  Thackeray  disrespectfully  of  the 
"  old  tragedies — well-nigh  dead,  and  full  time  too — in  which  half  a  dozen  charac- 
ters appear  and  shout  sonorous  Alexandrines  for  half  a  dozen  hours  ;  "  or  we  are 
disposed  to  agree  with  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold,  that  their  drama,  being  fundament- 
ally insufficient  both  in  substance  and  in  form,  the  French,  with  all  their  gifts, 
have  not,  as  we  have,  an  adequate  form  for  poetry  of  the  highest  class.  Those 
who  remember  Rachel,  however,  can  testify  that  she  breathed  the  most  ardent 
life  into  the  frigid  remains  of  Racine  and  Corneille,  relumed  them  with  Prome 
thean  heat,  and  showed  them  to  be  instinct  with  the  truest  and  intensest  passion 
When  she  occupied  the  scene,  there  could  be  no  thought  of  the  old  artificial 
times  of  hair  powder  and  rouge,  periwigs  and  patches,  in  connection  with  the 
characters  she  represented.  Phedre  and  Hermione,  Pauline  and  Camille,  inter- 
preted by  her  genius,  became  as  real  and  natural,  warm  and  palpitating,  as  Con- 
stance or  Lady  Macbeth  could  have  been  when  played  by  Mrs.  Siddons,  or  as 
Juliet  when  impersonated  by  Miss  O'Neill.  Before  Rachel  came,  it  had  been 
thought  that  the  new  romantic  drama  of  MM.  Hugo  and  Dumas,  because  of  its 
greater  truth  to  nature,  had  given  the  coup  dc  gnicc  to  the  old  classic  plays  ;  ])ut 
the  public,  at  her  bidding,  turned  gladly  from  the  spasms  and  the  rant  of  "An- 
gelo "  and  "  Ang^le,"  "  Antony  "  and  "  Hernani,"  to  the  old-world  stories,  the 
formal  tragedies  of  the  seventeenth  century  poet-dramatists  of  France.  The 
actress  fairly  witched  her  public.  There  was  something  of  magic  in  her  very 
presence  upon  the  scene. 

None  could  fail  to  be  impressed  by  the  aspect  of  the  slight,  pallid  woman  who 


368  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

seemed  to  gain  height  by  reason  of  her  slenderness,  who  moved  toward  her  audi 
ence  with  such  simple  natural  majesty,  who  wore  and  conducted  her  fluent  clas- 
sical draperies  with  such  admirable  and  perfect  grace.  It  was  as  though  she  had 
lived  always  so  attired  in  tunic,  peplum,  and  pallium — had  known  no  other  dress 
— not  that  she  was  of  modern  times  playing  at  antiquity  ;  she  was  the  muse  of 
Greek  tragedy  in  person.  The  physical  traditions  of  her  race  found  expression 
or  incarnation  in  her.  Her  face  was  of  refined  Judaical  character — the  thin  nose 
slightly  curved,  the  lower  lip  a  trifle  full,  but  the  mouth  exquisitely  shaped,  and 
the  teeth  small,  white,  and  even.  The  profuse  black-brown  hair  was  smoothed 
and  braided  from  the  broad,  low,  white,  somewhat  over-hanging  brow,  beneath 
which  in  shadow  the  keen  black  eyes  flashed  out  their  lightnings,  or  glowed  lu- 
ridly like  coals  at  a  red  heat.  Her  gestures  were  remarkable  for  their  dignity  and 
appropriateness  ;  the  long,  slight  arms  lent  themselves  surprisingly  to  graceful- 
ness ;  the  beautifully  formed  hands,  with  the  thin  tapering  fingers  and  the  pink 
filbert  nails,  seemed  always  tremblingly  on  the  alert  to  add  significance  or  accent 
to  her  speeches.  But  there  was  eloquence  in  her  very  silence  and  complete  re- 
pose. She  could  relate  a  whole  history  by  her  changes  of  facial  expression.  She 
possessed  special  powers  of  self-control ;  she  was  under  subjection  to  both  art 
and  nature  when  she  seemed  to  abandon  herself  the  most  absolutel}^  to  the  whirl- 
wind of  her  passion.  There  were  no  undue  excesses  of  posture,  movement,  or 
tone.  Her  attitudes,  it  was  once  said,  were  those  of  "  a  Pythoness  cast  in 
bronze."  Her  voice  thrilled  and  awed  at  its  first  note  :  it  was  so  strangely  deep, 
so  solemnly  melodious,  until,  stirred  by  passion  as  it  were,  it  became  thick  and 
husky  in  certain  of  its  tones  ;  but  it  was  always  audible,  articulate,  and  telling, 
whether  sunk  to  a  whisper  or  raised  clamorously.  Her  declamation  was  superb, 
if,  as  critics  reported,  there  had  been  decline  in  this  matter  during  those  later 
years  of  her  life,  to  which  my  own  acquaintance  with  Rachel's  acting  is  confined. 
I  saw  her  first  at  the  Fran9ais  in  1849,  '''"'d  I  ^^'is  present  at  her  last  performance 
at  the  St.  James'  Theatre  in  1853,  having  in  the  interval  witnessed  her  assump- 
tion of  certain  of  her  most  admired  characters.  And  it  may  be  true,  too,  that, 
like  Kean,  she  was  more  and  more  disposed,  as  the  years  passed,  to  make 
"  points,"  to  slur  over  the  less  important  scenes,  and  reserve  herself  for  a  grand 
outburst  or  a  vehement  climax,  sacrificing  thus  manv  of  the  subtler  graces,  re- 
finements, and  graduations  of  elocution,  for  which  she  had  once  been  famous. 
To  English  ears,  it  was  hardly  an  offence  that  she  broke  up  the  sing-song  of  the 
rhymed  tirades  of  the  old  plays  and  gave  them  a  more  natural  sound,  regardless 
of  the  traditional  methods  of  speech  of  Clairon,  Le  Kain,  and  others  of  the  great 
French  players  of  the  past. 

Less  success  than  had  been  looked  for  attended  Rachel's  invasion  of  the 
repertory  of  Mile.  Mars,  an  actress  so  idolized  by  the  Parisians  that  her  sixty 
years  and  great  portliness  of  form  were  not  thought  hindrances  to  her  persona- 
tion of  the  youthful  heroines  of  modern  comedy  and  drama.  But  Rachel's  fittest 
occupation  and  her  greatest  triumphs  were  found  in  the  classical  poetic  plays. 
She,   perhaps,    intellectualized  too    much   the  creations  of    Hugo,    Dumas,  and 


-.   AND   AUTHORS 

ho  rnovf>d  toward  her  audi 


broii. 


it  was  dh>  tiiuugli  i-i;i.-   liad 

-hail  L-i|(ivvT^  lU)  othc'i  dress 

it  ;inliquit\  rhe  mi'se  of 

her  race  foun  slon 

nose 
t,  —    -:-     .-  ..^:.        ,.,  and 

profuse  black-brown  ha:  ahed 

-omewhat  over-hanging  brow,  i)(  iioath 
■  >ut  their  lightnings,  or  glowed  lu- 
re remarkable  for  their  digrm  v  and 
■lemselves  surprisingly  to  gracpful- 
tapcring  fingers  and  tin   jiink 
'cnificance  or  ;!ccent 
'C  and  complete  re- 
al expression.      She 
1  art 
•hiri- 

I  .r 

attitud 

iliiiMed  and   : At;d  at  i- -  iir:Tt  note:  it  was  so  sti 


aWOHatO  AO'ASM'Aai 


-tcrs. 

:'>posed, 

n*^   scenes 


ion  was  superb, 

during  those  later 

ting  is  confined 

iSt  performance 

ed  her  assump- 

true,  too,  that, 

d,    to    make 

.  .    :'  'or  ?  •L-^'-md 

subth 

once  been   tamo  lis, 

•  ■  ^     •  the 

Hess 

others  of  the  great 


iicr  sixtv 
not  thought  hin(i 

ind  drar  i  Rachel's  liuest 

'   in  th.      I   ■■^al  poetic  plays, 
itions  of    Hugfo,    Dumas,  and 


y^^/A/'    ..-/>r>?-?-   -vXy-, 


pRiNTFn  oif  Tin  Kuan  PKHM- 


RACHEL  369 

Scribe  ;  gave  them  excess  of  majesty.  Her  histrionic  style  was  too  exalted  an 
ideal  for  the  conventional  characters  of  the  drama  of  her  own  time  ;  it  was  even 
said  of  her  that  she  could  not  speak  its  prose  properly  or  tolerably.  She  disliked 
the  hair-powder  necessary  to  Adrienne  Lecouvreur  and  Gabrielle  de  Belle  Isle, 
although  her  beauty,  for  all  its  severit)',  did  not  lose  picturesqueness  in  the  cos- 
tumes of  the  time  of  Louis  XV.  As  Gabrielle  she  was  more  girlish  and  gentle, 
pathetic,  and  tender,  than  was  her  wont,  while  the  signal  fervor  of  her  speech 
addressed  to  Richelieu,  beginning,  "  Vous  mentez.  Monsieur  le  Due,"  stirred  the 
audience  to  the  most  excited  applause. 

Rachel  was  seen  upon  the  stage  for  the  last  time  at  Charleston  on  December 
17,    1856.      She    played    Adrienne    Lecouvreur.       She    had   been    tempted    to 
America  by  the  prospect  of  extravagant  profits.      It  had  been  dinned  into  her 
ears  that  Jenny  Lind,  bv  thirty-eight  performances  in  America,  had  realized  sev- 
enteen hundred  thousand  francs.      Why  might  not  she,  Rachel,  receive  as  much  ? 
And  then,  she  was  eager  to  quit   Paris.     There  had  been  strange  worship  there 
of  Madame  Ristori,  even  in  the  rejected  part  of  Medea.      But  already  Rachel's 
health  was  in  a  deplorable  state.      Her  constitution,  never  very  strong,  had  suf- 
fered severely  from  the  cruel  fatigues,  the  incessant  exertions,  she  had  undergone. 
It  may  be,  too,  that  the  deprivations  and  sufferings  of  her  childhood  now  made 
themselves  felt  as  over-due  claims  that  could  be  no  longer  denied  or  deferred. 
She  forced  herself  to  play,  in  fulfilment  of  her  engagement,  but  she  was  languid, 
weak,  emaciated  ;  she  coughed  incessantly,  her  strength  was  gone  ;  she  was  dy- 
ing slowly  but  certainly  of  phthisis.     And  she  appeared  before  an  audience  that 
applauded  her,  it  is  true,  but  cared  nothing  for  Racine  and  Corneille,  knew  little 
of  the  French  language,  and  were  urgent  that  she  should  sing  the  "  Marseillaise" 
as  she  had  sung  it  in  1848  !     It  was  forgotten,  or  it  was  not  known  in  America, 
that  the  actress  had  long  since  renounced  revolutionary  sentiments  to  espouse 
the  cause  of  the  Second  Empire.     She  performed  all  her  more  important  charac- 
ters, however,  at  New  York,  Philadelphia,  and  Boston.     Nor  was  the  undertak- 
ing commercially  disappointing,  if  it  did  not  wholly  satisfy  expectation.     She  re- 
turned to  France  possessed  of  nearly  three  hundred  thousand  francs  as  her  share 
of  the  profits  of  her  forty-two  performances  in  the  United  States  ;  but  she  returned 
to  die.     The  winter  of  1856  she  passed  at  Cairo.     She  returned  to  France  in  the 
spring  of  1857,  but  her  physicians  forbade  her  to  remain  long  in  Paris.      In  Sep- 
tember she  moved  again  to  the  South,  finding  her  last  retreat  in  the  villa  Sardou, 
at  Cannet,  a  little  village  in  the  environs  of  Cannes.      She  lingered  to  January 
3,  1858.     The  Theatre  Frangais  closed  its  doors  when  news  arrived  of  her  death, 
and  again  on  the  day  of  her  funeral.     The  body  was  embalmed  and  brought  to 
Paris  for  interment  in  the  cemetery  of  Pere  la  Chaise,  the  obsequies  being  per- 
formed in  accordance  with  the  Jewish  rites.     The  most  eminent  of  the  authors 
and  actors  of  France  were  present,  and  funeral  orations  were  delivered  by  MM. 
Jules  Janin,  Bataillc,  and  Augustc    Maciuel.      \'ictor  Hugo  was  in  exile;  or,  as 
Janin  announced,  the  author  of  "  Angelo  "  would  not  have  withheld  the  tribute 
of  his  eulogy  upon  the  sad  occasion. 

24 


370 


ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 


EDWIN  BOOTH* 

By  Clarence  Cook 
(l 833-1 S93) 


T' 


Mil-:  great  actor  who  has  lately  left  the 
world  furnished,  in  his  own  remarkable 
character  and  shining  career,  a  striking  excep- 
tion to  the  popular  tradition  that  men  of  genius 
are  the  fathers  of  ordinary  sons.  The  father  of 
Edwin  Booth  was  in  his  time  one  of  the  glories 
of  the  English  and  American  stage  ;  but,  e\'en 
in  his  case  the  strict  rule  wavered,  for  his  father, 
though  not  a  genius,  was  yet  a  man  of  excep- 
tional character  ;  one  who  marked  out  a  clear 
path  for  himself  in  the  world,  and  walked  in  it 
to  the  end. 

How  far  back  the  line  of  the  family  can  be 

traced,  or  what  was  its  origin,  we  do  not  know ; 

but  it  has  lately  been  said  that  the  family  was 

of  Hebrew  extraction,  and  came  into  England 

from   Spain,  where  it  had  been  known   b}'  the 

Spanish   name,  Cabana.       The  branch  of    the 

family  that  left  Spain  to  live  in  England  translated  the  name  into  the  language 

of  their  new  home,  and  from  "  Cabana,"  a  shepherd's  cabin,  made  the  English 

equivalent,  Booth. 

However  it  may  have  been  in  this  case,  it  was  quite  in  the  order  of  things 
that  this  change  of  name  should  be  made.  It  has  been  done  everywhere  in 
Europe  since  very  early  times,  and  is  doing  to-da)-  in  this  country  by  new  com- 
ers from  all  parts  of  the  old  world. 

The  first  of  the  Booths  we  read  of  in  England  was  a  silversmith,  living  in 
Bloomsbury,  London,  in  the  latter  half  of  the  last  century.  He  had  a  son, 
Richard,  who  was  bred  to  the  law,  but  who  was  so  imbued  with  the  republican 
ideas  rife  at  the  time  that  he  actually  came  to  America  to  fight  in  the  cause  of 
Independence  !  He  was  taken  prisoner,  and  carried  back  to  England,  where,  not 
without  some  struggles,  he  again  applied  himself  to  the  practice  of  the  law,  and 
in  time  made  a  fortune.  He  did  not,  however,  forget  America,  and  we  are  told 
that  he  had,  hanging  in  his  house,  a  portrait  of  Washington,  which  he  expected 
all  his  visitors  to  salute. 

One  of  the  ways  in  which  the  republicans  of  that  time  showed  where  their  sym- 
pathies lav,  was  in  naming  their  children  after  the  heroes  of  Greece  and  Rome ; 
and  accordingly  we  find  Richard  Booth  calling  his  eldest  son,  Junius  Brutus 

"  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selmar  Hess. 


EDWIN    BOOTH  371 

Booth,  after  the  Roman  patriot.  This  son  was  born  in  London,  in  1796.  His 
father  was  a  man  of  scholarly  tastes,  and  gave  the  boy  a  classical  education,  but 
it  was  long  before  he  showed  a  marked  inclination  for  anv  particular  walk  in 
life.  He  tried  his  hand  at  painting,  sculpture,  and  poetry  ;  and  for  a  while  stud- 
ied law  with  his  father.  But,  when  the  time  came  to  choose,  he  gave  his  voice  for 
the  navy,  and  would  have  joined  the  brig  Boxer,  then  fitting  out  for  Nova  Sco- 
tia. But,  as  war  threatened  between  England  and  America,  he  was  induced,  by 
the  strong  persuasions  of  his  father,  not  to  run  the  risk  of  being  forced  to  fight 
against  America.  He  then  decided  to  go  upon  the  stage,  and,  in  spite  of  his 
father's  remonstrances,  carried  out  his  purpose.  After  some  unimportant  essays 
he  at  last  succeeded  in  attracting  public  attention,  and  before  long  showed  such 
unmistakable  ability  in  dealing  with  difficult  parts,  that  the  public,  till  that  ,time 
undivided  in  its  enthusiasm  for  Kean,  awoke  to  the  fact  that  a  dangerous  rival 
threatened  the  security  of  their  idol's  throne.  In  the  midst  of  his  successes,  how- 
ever, Booth  married  and  left  England  with  his  wife  for  a  honeymoon  trip  to  the 
West  Indies.  He  had  intended  to  return  at  once  to  England,  but  he  was  per- 
suaded to  prolong  his  journey  and  to  visit  New  York.  After  playing  a  success- 
ful engagement  there  he  went  to  Richmond,  where  he  was  no  less  prosperous. 
He  next  visited  New  Orleans  and  acquired  such  facility  in  speaking  French  that 
he  played  parts  in  French  plays  more  than  acceptably,  and  distinguished  himself 
by  acting  Orestes  in  Racine's  "  Andromaque,"  to  the  delight  of  the  French-speak- 
ing population.  His  accent  is  said  to  have  been  remarkable  for  its  purity.  Re- 
turning to  New  York,  he  acted  Othello  to  Forrest's  lago  ;  but,  in  the  midst  of  his 
successes,  the  death  of  two  of  his  children  produced  a  temporary  insanity,  and 
this  was  made  worse  by  the  news  of  the  death  of  his  fa\'orite  son,  Henr\'  B\ron, 
in  London,  of  small-pox.  This  grievous  loss  was,  however,  to  be  made  up  to 
him  by  his  son,  Edwin,  in  whom  he  was  to  find  the  counterpart  of  himself,  soft- 
ened, refined,  ennobled,  while  between  father  and  son  was  to  grow  a  strong  at- 
tachment, a  bond  of  mutual  affection  to  last  as  long  as  life  should  endure. 

Edwin  Thomas  Booth  was  born  at  Bel  Air,  Maryland,  November  12,  1833. 
He  was  named  Edwin,  after  his  father's  friend,  Edwin  Forrest,  and  Thomas, 
after  Thomas  Flynn,  the  actor,  whom  the  elder  Booth  had  known  intimately  in 
London.  His  son  dropped  the  name  of  Thomas,  later  in  life,  and  was  only 
known  to  the  public  by  the  name  of  Edwin  Booth.  Owing  to  his  father's  wan- 
dering life  Edwin  had  few  advantages  of  education,  but  he  made  the  most  of  his 
opportunities,  and  indeed  was  a  student  of  good  letters  all  his  life,  turning  the 
light  of  all  he  learned  from  books  and  experience  upon  his  art.  His  youth  is 
described  as  reticent,  and  marked  by  a  strong  individuality,  with  a  deep  sympathy 
for  his  father,  early  manifested ;  his  father,  a  much  enduring,  suffering  man, 
strongly  in  need  of  sympathy,  knowing  to  repay  it,  too,  in  kind. 

Edwin  Booth  made  his  first  appearance  on  the  stage  in  1849  '^t  the  Boston 
Museum  in  the  youthful  part  of  Tressil,  in  Colley  Gibber's  version  of  Shakes- 
peare's "  Richard  HI."  It  had  been  against  his  father's  wishes  that  he  had  adopt- 
ed the  stage  as  a  profession  ;  but,  as  his  father  had  done  in  a  like  case  before  him, 


372  ARTISTS    AND   AUTHORS 

he  persevered,  and  soon  had  the  satisfaction  of  convincing  his  parent  that  he  had 
decided  wisely.  He  did  not  at  once  come  to  New  \'ork  after  his  success  in 
Boston,  but  went  to  Providence  and  to  Philadelphia,  acting  Cassio  in  "Othello," 
and  Wilford  in  the  "  Iron  Chest,"  a  part  he  soon  made  his  own  and  in  which  he 
made  his  first  appearance  in  New  York,  playing  at  the  National  Theatre  in 
Chatham  Street,  in  1850.  The  next  year  he  played  Richard  III.  for  the  first 
time,  taking  the  part  unexpectedly  to  fill  the  place  of  his  father,  who  was  sud- 
denly ill.  In  1852  he  went  out  with  his  father  to  San  Francisco,  where  his 
brother,  Junius  Brutus  Booth,  Jr.,  was  the  manager  of  a  theatre  ;  and  the  father 
and  his  two  sons  acted  together.  At  Sacramento,  we  are  told  that  the  incident 
occurred  which  led  Edwin  Booth  to  think  of  acting  Hamlet,  a  part  which  was 
to  become  as  closely  associated  with  his  name  as  that  of  Richard  III.  was  with 
his  father.  He  was  dressed  for  the  part  of  Jaffier  in  Otway's  play,  "Venice  Pre- 
served," when  some  one  said  to  him  "  You  look  like  Hamlet,  why  not  play  it  ? " 
It  was,  however,  some  time  before  he  ventured  to  assume  the  part.  In  October, 
1852,  the  father  and  son  parted,  not  to  meet  again.  The  elder  Booth  went  to 
New  Orleans,  and  after  playing  for  a  week  took  passage  in  a  steamboat  on  the 
Mississippi,  and  catching  a  severe  cold  succumbed  after  a  few  days'  illness  and 
died.  For  a  while  after  his  father's  death  Edwin  suffered  greatly  from  poverty 
and  from  the  hardships  of  his  precarious  life,  unsustained  as  he  now  was  by  the 
afifection  and  encouragement  of  a  father  who,  with  all  his  faults,  and  in  all  the 
misfortunes  brought  on  by  serious  ill-health  and  some  aberrations  that  were  the 
effect  of  ill-health,  had  always  been  an  aflfectionate  and  true  friend.  But  a  talent 
such  as  Edwin  Booth  possessed,  united  to  a  high  character,  and  to  a  dauntless 
spirit,  could  not  long  be  hid,  and  in  a  short  time  his  name  began  to  be  heard  of 
as  that  of  one  destined  to  great  ends.  In  1854  he  went  to  Australia  as  a  member 
of  Laura  Keene's  company.  He  had  made  a  deep  impression  in  California,  act- 
ing such  parts  as  Richard  III.,  Shylock,  Macbeth,  and  Hamlet,  and  on  returning 
there  from  Australia  that  first  impression  was  greatly  strengthened.  On  leaving 
San  Francisco  he  received  various  testimonials  showing  the  high  esteem  in 
which  his  acting  was  held  by  the  educated  part  of  the  community  ;  but  through- 
out Edwin  Booth's  career,  the  interest  he  excited  in  the  vast  audiences  that  fol- 
lowed him  was  by  no  means  confined  to  the  self-styled  "  best  people."  Though 
he  never  "  played  to  the  gallery,"  the  heart  of  the  gallery  was  as  much  with  him 
as  the  heart  of  the  boxes,  and  he  knew  the  value  of  its  rapt  silence  as  well  as  of 
its  stormy  voices. 

In  Boston,  in  1857,  he  played  Sir  Giles  Overreach,  in  Massinger's  "A  New 
Way  to  Pay  Old  Debts,"  and  the  profound  impression  he  made  in  it  confirmed 
him  in  his  purpose  to  devote  himself  to  tragic  acting.  The  story  of  an  actor's 
life  is  seldom  eventful,  and  Mr.  Booth's  history,  after  his  first  assured  success,  is 
the  record  of  a  long  line  of  triumphs  without  a  failure.  The  most  remarkable 
of  these  triumphs  was  at  the  Winter  Garden  Theatre  in  New  York,  w^here  he 
acted  Hamlet  to  large  and  ever-increasing  audiences  for  over  one  hundred  suc- 
cessive nights,  that   is,  from   November   21,  1864,  to  March  24,  1865.     On  this 


EDWIN    BOOTH  373 

occasion  a  gold  medal  was  presented  to  the  actor  by  friends  and  admirers  in  New 
York  ;  the  list  of  subscribers  including  the  names  of  many  well-known  citi- 
zens. The  Winter  Garden  Theatre  was  managed  by  Booth  and  his  brother-in- 
law,  the  clever  actor,  J.  S.  Clarke,  until  Booth  bought  out  Clarke  and  assumed 
the  entire  management  himself.  In  1865  the  terrible  tragedy  occurred  which 
blighted  Booth's  whole  after-life,  and  for  a  time  drove  him  from  the  stao^e.  He 
did  not  act  again  until  1866;  in  1867  the  theatre  was  destroyed  by  fire,  and  in 
1868  the  corner-stone  of  a  new  building,  to  be  known  as  Booth's  Theatre,  was 
laid,  and  in  a  short  time  New  York  v/as  in  possession,  for  the  first  time,  of  a 
thoroughly  appointed,  comfortable,  and  handsome  theatre.  This  building  was 
made  famous  by  a  number  of  Shakespearian  revivals  that  for  beauty,  magnifi- 
cence, and  scenic  poetry  have,  we  believe,  never  been  equalled.  We  doubt  if 
"  Hamlet,"  "Julius  Caesar,"  or  "  Romeo  and  Juliet,"  have  ever  been  presented  with 
more  satisfying  completeness  to  the  eye  and  to  the  imagination  than  in  this  theatre 
by  Mr.  Booth  and  his  company.  Although  the  theatre  was  in  existence  for  thir- 
teen years,  from  1868  to  1882,  when  it  was  finally  closed,  Mr.  Booth's  manage- 
ment lasted  only  about  half  that  time.  The  speculation  was  not  a  fortunate  one 
for  the  actor ;  the  expenses  ate  up  all  the  profits,  and  Mr.  Booth  was  bankrupted 
by  his  venture.  He  paid  all  his  debts,  however,  and  went  bravely  to  work  to 
build  up  a  new  fortune.  He  made  a  tour  of  the  South,  which  was  one  long 
ovation,  and  in  a  season  of  eight  weeks  in  San  Francisco  he  took  in  $96,000. 

In  1880  he  went  to  England  and  remained  there  two  years.  In  1882  he  vis- 
ited Germany,  acting  in  both  countries  with  great  success,  and  in  1883  he  re- 
turned home  and  made  a  tour  of  America,  repeating  everywhere  his  old  triumphs, 
and  winning  golden  opinions  from  all  classes  of  his  countrymen. 

Edwin  Booth  died  in  New  York,  June  7,  1893,  at  the  Players'  Club, 
where  he  had  lived  for  the  last  few  years  of  his  life.  This  was  a  building  erected 
by  his  own  munificence,  fitted  up  with  luxurious  completeness,  and  presented  to 
a  socieity  of  his  professional  brethren  for  the  use  and  behoof  of  his  fellow-artists, 
reserving  for  himself  only  the  modest  apartment  where  he  chose  to  live,  in  sym- 
pathetic touch  with  those  who  still  pursued  the  noble  art  he  had  relinquished. 

Mr.  Booth  was  twice  married.  By  his  first  wife,  Miss  Mary  Devlin,  who 
died  in  1863,  he  had  one  child,  a  daughter;  by  the  second,  Miss  McVicker,  he 
had  no  children.     She  died  in  1881. 


^t^-^C-C^-^-^ 


^:::^V;?tr 


374 


ARTISTS    AND    AUTHORS 


JOSEPH  JEFFERSON* 

Bv  Clarence  Cook 
(born    1829) 


JOSEPH  Jefferson,  distinguished,  among  his  other 
brilliant  successes  as  an  actor,  as  the  creator 
for  this  generation  of  the  character  of  Rip  Van 
Winkle  in  the  play  dramatized  from  the  story  in 
Washington  Irving's  "Sketch  Book,"  was  the  third 
of  his  name  in  a  family  of  actors.  The  first  of  the 
three  was  born  at  Plymouth,  England,  in  1774. 
He  was  the  son  of  Thomas  Jefferson,  a  comedian 
of  merit,  the  contemporary  and  friend  of  Garrick, 
and  came  to  this  country  in  i  795,  making  his  first 
appearance  in  New  York  on  February  10,  1796, 
in  the  part  of  Squire  Richard  in  "The  Provoked 
Husband."  Dunlap  says  that,  young  as  he  was, 
he  was  already  an  artist,  and  that  among  the  men 
of  the  company  he  held  the  first  place.  He  lived  in  this  country  for  thirty-six 
years,  admired  as  an  actor  and  respected  as  a  man.  He  died  at  Harrisburg, 
Pennsylvania,  in  1832. 

Joseph  Jefferson,  the  second,  was  born  in  Philadelphia  in  1804.  He  inherited 
the  laughing  blue  eyes  and  sunny  disposition  of  his  father,  but  he  had  not  his 
talent  as  an  actor ;  he  is  said  to  have  been  best  in  old  men's  parts.  His  taste, 
however,  led  him  to  scene-painting  rather  than  to  acting  ;  yet  his  skill  in  either 
direction  was  not  enough  to  win  success,  and,  in  spite  of  well-meant  efforts,  he 
lived  and  died  a  poor  man  :  ill  luck  pursuing  him  to  the  end  of  his  days,  when  he 
was  carried  off  by  yellow  fever  at  Mobile  in  1842,  just  as  his  unprosperous  skies 
were  brightening  a  little,  His  son  bears  affectionate  witness  to  the  upright  charac- 
ter of  the  man  and  to  his  indomitable  cheerfulness  in  the  most  adverse  circum- 
stances. He  spared  no  pains  in  bringing  up  his  children  in  good  ways,  and  he 
was  earnestly  seconded  by  his  wife,  a  heroic  figure  in  her  humble  sphere,  whose 
tact  and  courage  not  seldom  saved  the  family  bark  v/hen  it  was  drifting  in  shoal 
water.  Mrs.  Jefferson  came  of  French  parents,  and  was  a  Mrs.  Burke,  a  widow 
with  one  child,  a  son,  when  she  married  Mr.  Jefferson.  Her  son  tells  us  that 
she  had  been  one  of  the  most  attractive  stars  in  America,  the  leading  prima 
donna  of  the  country  ;  but  she  bore  her  changed  fortune,  as  the  wife  of  an  unsuc- 
cessful actor  and  manager,  with  no  less  dignity  on  the  stage  of  real  life,  where 
no  applause  was  to  be  had  but  what  came  from  those  who  loved  her  as  mother, 
wife,  and  friend. 

This,  then,  was  the   family  circle  in  which  our  Joseph  Jefferson   passed  his 

•  Copyright,  1894,  by  Selniar  Hess. 


JOSEPH    JEFFERSON  375 

earliest  years,  the  formative  period  of  his  life.  There  were  the  kind-hearted, 
easy-going  father,  the  practical,  energetic  mother,  a  sister,  and  the  half-brother, 
Charles  Burke,  whose  after-reputation  as  an  actor  lives  in  the  pages  of  Jefferson's 
autobiography  enshrined  in  words  of  warm  but  judicious  appreciation.  "  Al- 
though only  a  half-brother,"  says  Jefferson,  "he  seemed  like  a  father  to  mc,  and 
there  was  a  deep  and  strange  affection  between  us."  Nor  must  mention  be  for- 
gotten of  one  other  member  of  the  family  :  Mary,  his  foster-mother,  as  Jefferson 
affectionately  calls  her,  "  a  faithful,  loving,  truthful  friend,  rather  than  a  servant, 
with  no  ambition  or  thought  for  herself,  living  only  for  us,  and  totally  uncon- 
scious of  her  own  existence." 

Joseph  Jefferson,  the  third  of  the  name,  and  in  whom  the  talent  of  his  grand- 
father was  to  reappear  enriched  with  added  graces  of  his  own,  was  born  in  Phila- 
delphia in  1829.  He  tells  us  that  his  earliest  recollections  are  connected  with  a 
theatre  in  Washington.  This  was  a  rickety,  old,  frame-building  adjoining  the 
house  in  which  his  father  lived  as  manager,  the  door  at  the  end  of  the  hall-way 
opening  directly  upon  the  stage ;  and  as  a  toddling  little  chap  in  a  short  frock  he 
was  allowed  full  run  of  the  place.  Thus  "  behind  the  scenes.  "  was  his  first  play- 
ground ;  and  here,  "in  this  huge  and  dusty  toy-shop  made  for  children  of  a  larger 
growth,"  he  got  his  first  experience.  He  was  early  accustomed  to  face  an  audi- 
ence ;  for,  being  the  son  of  the  manager  and  almost  living  in  the  theatre,  he  was 
always  pressed  into  the  service  whenever  a  small  child  was  wanted,  and  "  often 
went  on  the  stage  in  long  clothes  as  a  property  infant  in  groups  of  happy  peas- 
antry." His  first  dim  recollection  of  such  a  public  appearance  is  as  the  "child," 
in  Kotzebue's  play,  "  Pizarro,"  who  is  carried  across  the  bridge  by  RoUa.  His 
next  appearance  was  in  a  new  entertainment,  called  "  Living  Statues,"  where  he 
struck  attitudes  as  "  Ajax  Defying  the  Lightning,"  or  "  The  Dying  Gladiator." 
At  four  years  of  age  he  made  a  hit  by  accompanying  T.  D.  Rice,  the  original 
"Jim  Crow,"  as  a  miniature  copy  of  that  once  famous  character,  and  the  first 
money  he  earned  was  the  sum  of  $24  thrown  upon  the  stage  in  silver  from  pit 
and  gallery,  to  reward  his  childish  dancing  and  singing  on  that  occasion. 

Thus  early  wedded  to  the  stage,  Jefferson  followed  the  fortunes  of  his  family, 
and  led  with  them  a  wandering  life  for  many  years,  growing,  by  slow  degrees  and 
constant,  varied  practice,  to  the  perfection  of  his  prime.  In  1838  his  father  led 
the  flock  to  Chicago,  just  then  grown  from  an  Indian  village  to  a  thriving  place 
of  two  thousand  inhabitants,  where  he  was  to  join  his  brother  in  the  manage- 
ment of  a  new  theatre,  then  building.  Jefferson's  account  of  the  journey  is  a 
striking  picture,  at  once  amusing  and  pathetic,  of  the  changes  that  have  been 
wrought  by  fifty  years.  The  real  privations  and  hardships  of  the  trip  are  veiled 
in  the  actor's  story  by  his  (juiet  humor  and  his  disposition  to  see  everything  in  a 
cheerful  light.  Always  quizzing  his  own  youthful  follies,  he  cannot  conceal  from 
us  by  any  mischievous  anecdotes  his  essential  goodness  of  nature,  his  merry  help- 
fulness, his  unselfish  devotion  to  the  welfare  'of  the  others,  or  the  pluck  with 
wiiich  he  met  the  accidents  of  this  itinerant  life.  From  Chicago,  where  their 
success  was  not  brilliant,  the  family  went  by  stage  to  Springfield,  where,  by  a  sin- 


376  ARTISTS    AND   AUTHORS 

gular  chance,  they  were  rescued  from  the  danger  that  threatened  them  in  the  clos- 
ing of  the  theatre  by  a  municipal  law  trumped  up  in  the  interest  of  religious 
revivalists,  by  the  adroitness  of  a  young  lawyer,  who  proved  to  be  none  other 
than  Abraham  Lincoln.  In  Memphis,  when  bad  business  had  closed  the  thea- 
tre, young  JefTerson's  pluck  and  ready  wit  saved  the  family  purse  from  absolute 
collapse.  A  city  ordinance  had  been  passed,  requiring  that  all  carts,  drays,  and 
public  vehicles  should  be  numbered  ;  and  the  boy,  hearing  of  this,  called  at  the 
mayor's  office,  and,  explaining  the  situation  that  had  obliged  his  father  to  ex- 
change acting  for  sign-painting,  applied  in  his  name  for  the  contract  for  painting 
the  numbers — and  obtained  it  !  The  new  industry  furnished  father  and  son  with 
a  month's  work,  and  some  jobs  at  sign-painting  helped  still  further  to  make  life 
easier. 

From  Memphis  the  family  went  to  Mobile,  where  they  hoped  to  rest  after 
their  long  wanderings,  and  where  it  was  also  hoped  the  children,  Joseph  and  his  sis- 
ter, might  be  put  to  school.  But  the  yellow  fever  was  raging  in  Mobile,  and  they 
had  been  in  the  city  only  a  fortnight  when  Mr.  Jefferson  was  attacked  by  the  dis- 
ease and  died.  In  Mobile,  too,  the  good  Mary  died,  and  Mrs.  Jefferson  was  left 
alone  to  care  for  herself  and  her  children  as  she  could.  She  had  no  longer  a 
heart  for  acting,  and  she  decided  to  open  a  boarding-house  for  actors,  while 
Joseph  and  his  sister  earned  a  small  stipend  by  variety  work  in  the  theatre. 

More  years  of  hardship  followed — the  trio  of  mother  and  children  wandering 
over  the  country,  south  and  west  :  in  Mississippi  and  Mexico,  seeing  life  in  all 
its  phases  of  ill  luck  and  disappointment,  with  faint  gleams  of  success  here  and 
there,  but  meeting  all  with  a  spirit  of  such  cheerful  bravery  as  makes  the  dark- 
est experience  yield  a  pleasure  in  the  telling.  Surely,  it  might  soften  the  heart  of 
the  sourest  enemy  of  the  stage  to  read  the  spirit  in  which  this  family  met  the 
long-continued  crosses  of  their  professional  life. 

Joseph  Jefferson  tells  the  story  of  his  career  so  modestly,  that  it  is  hard  to 
discover  just  when  it  was  that  success  first  began  to  turn  a  smiling  face  upon  his 
efforts.  Yet  it  would  seem  as  if,  for  himself,  the  day  broke  when  he  created  the 
part  of  Asa  Trenchard  in  "Our  American  Cousin."  He  says  that  up  to  1858, 
when  he  acted  that  part,  he  had  been  always  more  or  less  a  "legitimate"  actor, 
that  is,  one  who  has  his  place  with  others  in  a  stock  company,  and  never  thinks 
of  himself  as  an  individual  and  single  attraction — a  star,  as  it  is  called.  While 
engaged  with  this  part,  it  suddenly  occurred  to  him  that  in  acting  Asa  Trenchard 
he  had,  for  the  first  time  in  his  life  on  the  stage,  spoken  a  pathetic  speech  ;  up  to 
that  time  all  with  him  had  been  pure  comedy.  Now  he  had  found  a  part  in 
which  he  could  move  his  audience  to  tears  as  well  as  smiles.  This  was  to  him  a 
delightful  discovery,  and  he  looked  about  for  a  new  part  in  which  he  could  repeat 
the  experiment.  One  day  in  summer,  as  he  lay  in  the  loft  of  a  barn  reading  in  a 
book  he  well  calls  delightful,  Pierre  Irving's  "Life  and  Letters  of  Washington 
Irving,"  he  learned  that  the  great  writer  had  seen  him  act  the  part  of  Goldfinch, 
in  Holcroft's  "  Road  to  Ruin,"  and  that  he  reminded  him  of  his  grandfather, 
Joseph  Jefferson,  "in  look,  gesture,  size,  and  make."     Naturally  pleased  to  find 


\UTHORS 


rev 

tl. 

trt 


that  til. 
i!  uiii]»c(l  up  in 


m  in  the  clos- 
lest  of   religious 


■Ling  lawyer,  who  ]■  io  be  none  other 

is,  when  bad  business  had  closed  the  thea- 

ready  wit  saved  the  family  purse  from  absolute 

■    ii.iu   been  passed,  requiring  thai  all  carts,  drays,  and 

numbered  ;  and  the  boy,  hearing  of  this,  called  at  the 

.plaining  the  situation  that  had  obliged  his  father  to  ex- 

iga-painting,  applied  in  his  name  for  the  contract  for  painting 

I.,    MiiMiM.    -      i:id  obtained  it  !     The  new  industry  furnished  father  and  son.  with 

a  month's  work,  and  some  jobs  at  sien-paintinc  helped  still  further  to  make  life 

easier. 

From  Memphis  the  family  went  to  Mobile,  where  they  hoped  to  rest  after 
their  long  wanderings,  and  where  it  was  also  hoped  the  children,  Joseph  and  his  sis- 
ter. iTiio'bt  be  put  to  school.  But  the  yellow  fever  was  raging  in  Mobile,  and  they 
ha  a  fortnight  when  Mr.  Jefferson  was  attacked  by  the  dis- 

ease and  died.  lied,  and  Mrs.  Jefferson  was  left 

,1,  .  ..1.1       ..I,     ...,  1  .,f^  longer  a 

:•-,   while 


aaaoA  aoa  aA  .Koaaa-HCiai  aoi  ,  ,i 

auiJ  Moa'?.hf,^.rf„i  the  dark- 

Uie  uiling.     Surely,  it  imghL.soltcn  the  heart  of 
.il:^    lo  read  the  spir^'   ■•    ^ '-..k  .|-,is  family  met  the 
long-continue d  crosses  of  their  i-)rofessional  life. 

Joseph  Jefferson  tells  thi  liis  career  so  modestly,  that  it  is  hard  to 

discover  jv  that  ^l..^    .-.s  tir>c  '  >  turn  a  smiling  face  upon  his 


'WLwl_.>t.      VlH„iIl\        V^'l        III'. 


■  '''  ■sell,  I.  '   l...^^e  when  he  created  the 

\v  C"  savs  that  up  ro   TR58, 

legitim; 

luv,  am:  diiuks 

•-■"   -  While 

iichard 

:  up  to 

part  in 

- .  :„-_>  him  a 

juld  repeat 

rn  reading  in  a 

of  Washington 

.-c.icd  that  the  g.....  ..w....  ....  .....  ....  ,  .ill  of  Goldfinch, 

ft's  "  Road  to   Ruin,"  and  that  I  lided  him  of  his  grandfather, 

ifcrson,  "in  look,  gesture,  size,  and  make."     Naturally  pleased  to  find 


efforts.      \ 

part  of  '\' 

w!i 

tliar  is.  Oh 

of  iiimself  c. 

en"  'CT'^d  with  ' 

he 

thiii    tuuc  all 

\\'hich  he  couk.  i.i  •,.    .,, 

(j.ii  r!,ft",ii  discovery,  and 

ti- 


dehglittul 


/^ 


/,■/, 


JOSEPH   JEFFERSON  377 

himself  remembered  and  written  of  by  such  a  man,  he  lay  musing  on  the  compli- 
ment, when  the  "  Sketch  Book  "  and  the  story  of  Rip  van  Winkle  came  suddenly 
into  his  mind.  "There  was  to  me,"  he  writes,  "  magic  in  the  sound  of  the  name 
as  I  repeated  it.  Why  was  not  this  the  very  character  I  wanted  ?  An  American 
story  by  an  American  author  was  surely  just  the  thing  suited  to  an  American 
actor." 

There  had  been  three  or  four  plays  founded  on  this  story,  but  Jefferson  says 
that  none  of  them  were  good.  His  father  and  his  half-brother  ha'd  acted  the  part 
before  him,  bj.it  nothing  that  he  remembered  gave  him  any  hope  that  he  could 
make  a  good  play  out  of  existing  material.  He  therefore  went  to  work  to  con- 
struct a  plav  for  himself,  and  his  story  of  how  he  did  it,  told  in  two  pages  of  his 
book,  and  with  the  most  unconscious  air  in  the  world,  reveals  the  whole  secret 
of  Jefferson's  acting  :  its  humor  and  pathos  subtly  mingled,  its  deep  humanity, 
its  pure  poetry — the  assemblage  of  qualities,  in  fine,  that  make  it  the  most  perfect 
as  well  as  the  most  original  product  of  the  American  stage. 

Yet  the  plav,  even  in  the  form  he  gave  it,  did  not  satisfy  him,  nor  did  it  make 
the  impression  in  America  that  he  desired.  It  was  not  until  five  years  later  that 
Dion  Boucicault,  in  London,  remade  it  for  Jefferson  ;  and  it  was  in  that  city  it 
first  saw  the  light  in  its  new  form,  September  5,  1865.  It  was  at  once  successful, 
and  had  a  run  of  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  nights. 

With  his  Asa  Trenchard  and  his  Rip  van  Winkle  will  ever  be  associated  in 
the  loving  memor)^  of  play -goers  his  Bob  Acres  in  Sheridan's  "  Rivals,"  thought 
bv  manv  to  be  his  capital  part — a  personification  where  all  the  foibles  of  the 
would-be  man-of-the-world  :  his  self-conceit,  his  brag,  his  cowardice,  are  trans- 
formed into  virtues  and  captivate  our  hearts,  dissolved  in  the  brimming  humor 
which  yet  never  overflows  the  just  measure,  so  degenerating  into  farce. 

Between  the  two  productions  of  Rip  van  Winkle  in  New  York  and  in 
London,  Jefferson  had  had  many  strange  experiences.  His  wife  died  in  1861, 
and  he  broke  up  his  household  in  New  York,  and  leaving  three  of  his  children 
at  school  in  that  city,  he  left  home  with  his  eldest  son  and  went  to  California. 
After  acting  in  San  Francisco,  he  sailed  for  Australia,  where  he  was  warmly 
received  ;  thence  went  to  the  other  British  colonies  in  that  region,  touched  on 
his  return  at  Lima  and  Callao  and  Panama,  at  which  place  he  took  a  sailing- 
packet  for  London,  and  after  his  great  success  in  that  city  returned  to  America 
in  1866.  In  1867  he  married,  in  Chicago,  Miss  Sarah  Warren,  and  since  that 
time  his  life  has  flowed  on  in  an  even  stream,  happy  in  all  its  relations,  private 
and  public,  crowned  with  honors,  not  of  a  gaudy  or  brilliant  kind,  but  solid 
and  enduring.  His  art  is  henceforth  part  and  parcel  of  the  rich  treasure  of  the 
American  stage. 


&^ 


^^^V:?^ 


t- 


378 


ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 


ADELINA  PATTI 


Bv  Frederick.  F.  Bukfen 


(born    1843) 


A 


CONSENSUS  of  opinion  places  this  distinguished  ar- 
tiste at  the  head  of  all  her  compeers,  for  it  may  be 
truly  said  that  she  is  the  brightest  star  which  has  daz- 
zled the  musical  firmament  during  the  past  half  century, 
and,  is  still  in  the  very  zenith  of  her  noonday  splendor. 

Regardful  of  the  transcendent  beauty  of  her  voice, 
enhanced  as  this  is  by  her  other  natural  and  attractive 
attributes,  one  might  almost  believe  that  nightingales 
have  surrounded  the  cradle  presided  over  by  Euterpe, 
for  never  has  bird  sung  so  sweetly  as  the  gifted  subject 
of  my  memoir,  and  while  the  Fates  smiled  on  the  birth 
of  their  favorite,  destined  to  become  the  unrivalled 
Queen  of  Song  throughout  the  civilized  world,  fanciful  natures  might  conceive 
a  poetical  vision,  and  behold  Melpomene  with  her  sad,  grave  eyes  breathing  into 
her  the  spirit  of  tragedy,  and  Thalia,  with  her  laughing  smile,  welcoming  a  gifted 
disciple  by  whose  genius  her  fire  was  to  be  rekindled  in  the  far  future. 

In  the  year  1861  there  arrived  in  England  a  young  singer  who,  accom 
panied  by  her  brother-in-law,  took  apartments  in  Norfolk  Street,  Strand.  The 
young  lady,  then  only  seventeen,  sought  Mr.  Frederick  Gye,  who  was  the  lessee 
of  the  Royal  Italian  Opera,  for  his  permission  to  sing  at  his  theatre,  volun- 
teering to  do  so  for  nothing.  The  offer  was  at  first  absolutely  declined,  but  sub- 
sequently the  young  artiste  succeeded,  and  made  her  first  appearance  on  May 
14,  1861,  as  Amina  in  Bellini's  opera  of  "La  Sonnambula."  Unheralded  by  any 
previous  notice,  she  was  then  totally  unknown  to  the  English  public.  Not  a 
syllable  had  reached  that  country  of  her  antecedents  or  fame.  I  remember  being 
present  on  the  occasion  when  this  youthful  cantatrice  tripped  lightly  on  to  the 
centre  of  the  stage.  Not  a  single  hand  was  raised  to  greet  her,  nor  a  sound  of 
welcome  extended  to  encourage  the  young  artiste.  The  audience  of  Covent 
Garden,  usually  reserved,  except  to  old-established  favorites,  seemed  wrapped  in 
more  than  their  conventional  coldness  on  that  particular  evening.  Ere  long, 
however,  indeed  before  she  had  finished  the  opening  aria,  a  change  manifested 
itself  in  the  feelings  of  all  present.  The  habitues  looked  round  in  astonishment, 
and  people  near  me  almost  held  their  breath  in  amazement.  The  second  act 
followed,  and  to  surprise  quickly  succeeded  delight,  for  when  in  the  third  act  she 
threw  all  her  vocal  and  dramatic  power  into  the  melodious  wailing  of  ''Ah  non 
credca"  with  its  brilliant  sequel,  ''■Ah  non  ginngc"  the  enthusiasm  of  the  audi- 
ence forgot  all   restriction,  and  burst  into  a  spontaneous  shout  of  applause,  the 


ADELINA    PATTI  379 

pent-up  fervor  of  the  assembly  exploding  in  a  ringing  cheer  of  acclamation  rarely 
heard  within  the  walls  of  the  Royal  Italian  Opera  House.  The  heroine  of  the 
evening  was  Adelina  Patti,  who  thenceforward  became  the  idol  of  the  musical 
world.  When  1  left  the  theatre  that  evening,  I  became  conscious  that  a  course 
of  fascination  had  commenced  of  a  most  unwonted  nature  ;  one  that  neither 
time  nor  change  has  modified,  but  which  three  decades  have  served  only  to  en- 
hance and  intensify. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  performance,  Mr.  Gye  went  on  to  the  stage  full  of 
the  excitement  which  prevailed  in  the  theatre,  and  he  immediately  concluded  an 
engagement  with  Mile.  Patti  on  the  terms  which  had  been  previously  agreed 
between  them;  these  being  that  Mile.  Patti  was  to  receive  at  the  rate  of  ^^150 
a  month  for  three  years,  appearing  twice  each  week  during  the  season,  or  at  the 
rate  of  about  ^17  for  each  performance.  Mr.  Gye  also  offered  her  the  sum  of 
^200  if  she  would  consent  to  sing  exclusively  at  Covent  Garden. 

Patti  repeated  her  performance  of  Amina  eight  times  during  the  season,  and 
subsequently  confirmed  her  success  by  her  assumption  of  Lucia,  Yioletta,  Zer- 
lina,  Martha,  and  Rosina. 

Having  met  with  such  unprecedented  success  throughout  the  London  season, 
Mile.  Patti  was  offered  an  engagement  to  sing  at  the  Italian  Opera  in  Paris, 
where  unusual  curiosity  was  awakened  concerning  her.  Everyone  is  aware  that 
the  Parisians  do  not  admit  an  artist  to  be  a  celebrity  until  they  have  themselves 
acknowledged  it.  At  Paris,  after  the  first  act,  the  sensation  was  indescribable, 
musicians,  ministers,  poets,  and  fashionable  beauties  all  concurring  in  the  gen- 
eral chorus  of  acclamation  ;  while  the  genial  Auber,  the  composer  of  so  many 
delightful  operas,  and  one  of  the  greatest  authorities,  by  his  experience  and  judg- 
ment, on  all  musical  matters,  was  so  enchanted  that  he  declared  she  had  made 
him  young  again,  and  for  several  days  he  could  scarcely  talk  on  any  other  subject 
but  Adelina  Patti  and  opera.  The  conquest  she  had  achieved  with  the  English 
public  was  thus  triumphantly  ratified  by  the  exacting  and  critical  members  of 
musical  society  in  Paris. 

Adele  Juan  Maria  Patti,  according  to  her  own  statement,  which  she  related 
to  the  Queen  Isabella  of  Spain,  was  born  at  Madrid,  on  February  19,  1843,  and 
is  the  youngest  daughter  of  two  famous  Italian  singers,  Signor  Salvatore  Patti 
and  Signora  Patti- Barili.  The  signor  having  placed  her  two  sisters — Amalia, 
who  subsequently  married  Maurice  Strakosch,  the  well-known  impresario,  and 
Carlotta,  also  a  vocalist  of  remarkable  powers — in  a  boarding-school  at  Milan, 
went  to  New  York  with  his  wife  and  daughter,  where  they  remained  until  Ade- 
lina reached  sixteen. 

Adelina  Patti  had  barely  reached  the  age  of  three  years  when  she  was  heard 
humming  and  singing  the  airs  her  mother  sang. 

The  child's  voice  was  naturally  so  flexible  that  executive  difficulties  were 
always  easy  to  her,  and,  before  she  hatl  attained  her  ninth  year  she  could  execute  a 
prolonged  shake  with  fluency.  Her  father  not  being  prosperous  at  the  time,  it  be- 
came a  necessity  for  him  to  look  for  support  to  his  little  Adelina,  who  had  shown 


380  ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 

such  reinarkahle  promise  ;  and,  accoi(lii\Lrly,  slie  began  to  take  singing  lessons — 
not,  as  is  stated  in  Grove's  "  Dictionar}^  of  Musicians,"  from  Maurice  Strakosch, 
but  from  a  French  lady,  subsequently  studying  with  her  step-brother,  Ettore  Ba- 
rili,  who  was  a  famous  baritone  singer  ;  but  nature  had  been  so  prodigal  of  her 
gifts  to  the  child  that  she  never  undertook  a  serious  course  of  study,  but,  as  she 
herself  says,  her  real  master  was  "  le  bon  Dieu."  At  a  very  early  age  she 
would  sing  and  play  the  part  of  Norma,  and  knew  the  whole  of  the  words  and 
music  of  Rosina,  the  heroine  of  Rossini's  immortal  "  II  Barbieredi  Seviglia."  She 
sang  at  various  concerts  in  different  cities,  until  she  reached  the  age  of  twelve 
and  a  half,  when  her  career  was  temporarily  interrupted,  for  Maurice  Strakosch, 
observing  the  ruinous  effect  the  continuous  strain  upon  her  delicate  voice  was 
working,  insisted  upon  her  discontinuing  singing  altogether,  which  advice  she 
happilv  followed.  After  this  interval  of  two  years'  silence,  and  having  emerged 
from  the  wonder-child  to  the  young  artiste,  she  recommenced  her  studies  un- 
der M.  Strakosch,  and  very  soon  afterward  was  engaged  to  sing  on  a  regular 
stage.  Strakosch  travelled  with  her  and  Gottschalk,  the  pianist,  through  the 
United  States,  during  the  tour  giving  a  number  of  concerts  with  varying  finan- 
cial results;  ultimately  returning  to  New  York  in  1859,  where  she  appeared  at  a 
concert  of  whicii  Tlic  Neiv  York  Herald  of  November  28th  gives  the  following 
notice  :  "  One  of  the  most  remarkable  events  in  the  operatic  history  of  the  me- 
tropolis, or  even  of  the  world,  has  taken  place  during  the  last  week  at  the  Acad- 
emy of  Music.  Mile.  Patti  sang  the  mad  scene  from  Lucia  in  such  a  superb 
manner  as  to  stir  up  the  audience  to  the  heartiest  demonstrations  of  delight. 
The  success  of  this  artiste,  educated  and  reared  among  us,  has  made  everybody 
talk  of  her."  In  the  following  year,  Strakosch  considered  the  time  had  arrived 
for  her  to  appear  m  Europe.  He  accordingly  brought  his  young  protegee  to 
England,  with  the  result  I  have  already  attempted  to  describe. 

After  singing  in  London  and  Paris,  Patti  was  engaged  to  appear  at  Berlin, 
Brussels,  Moscow,  and  St.  Petersburg,  at  which  latter  city  enthusiasm  reached 
its  climax,  when  on  one  occasion  she  was  called  before  the  curtain  no  fewer 
than  fortv  times.  One  who  was  with  her  there  during  her  last  visit,  writes  : 
"  Having  been  witness  of  Adelina's  many  triumphs  and  of  outbursts  of  enthusiasm 
bordering  upon  madness,  I  did  not  think  that  greater  demonstrations  were  possible. 
I  was  profoundly  mistaken,  however,  for  the  St.  Petersburg  public  far  surpassed 
anything  I  have  seen  before.  On  Adelina's  nights  extraordinary  profits  were 
made.  Places  for  the  gallery  were  sold  for  ten  roubles  each,  while  stalls  were 
quickly  disposed  of  for  a  hundred  roubles  each.  The  emperor  and  empress, 
with  the  whole  court,  took  part  in  the  brilliant  reception  accorded  to  Patti,  and 
flowers  to  the  amount  of  six  thousand  roubles  were  thrown  at  her." 

That  she  has  been  literally  worshipped  from  infancy  upward  is  only  a  natural 
consequence  of  her  unsurpassable  gifts,  and  nowhere  has  this  feeling  manifested 
itself  to  such  an  extent  as  in  Paris,  and  by  none  more  so  than  by  the  four  famous 
composers,  Auber,  Meyerbeer,  Rossini,  and  Gounod.  Auber,  after  hearing  her 
sing  Norina,  in  Donizetti's  "  Don  Pasquale,"  offered  her  a  bouquet  of  roses  from 


ADELINA    FATTI  381 

Normandy,  and  in  answer  to  her  questions  about  her  diamonds,  said,  "The  dia- 
monds you  wear  are  beautiful  indeed,  but  those  you  place  in  our  ears  arc  a  thou- 
sand times  better."  Patti  was  the  pet  of  the  gifted  composer  of  "  Guillaume 
Tell,"  and  no  one  was  ever  more  welcome  at  Rossini's  beautiful  villa  at  Passy,  well 
known  as  the  centre  of  a  great  musical  and  artistic  circle.  The  genial  Italian 
died  in  November,  1868,  and  Patti  paid  her  last  tribute  of  respect  to  his  memory 
by  taking  part  in  the  performance  of  his  immortal  "  Stabat  Mater,"  which  was 
given  on  the  occasion  of  Rossini's  burial  service. 

Gounod,  always  enthusiastic  in  his  remarks  upon  her,  said,  "  that  until  he 
heard  Patti,  all  the  Marguerites  were  Northern  maidens,  but  Patti  was  the  only 
Southern  Gretchen,  and  that  from  her. all  future  singers  could  learn  what  to  do 
and  avoid." 

Although  it  is  not  the  custom  to  bestow  titles  or  honorific  distinctions  upon 
artists  of  the  fair  sex,  yet,  in  lieu  of  these,  to  such  an  extent  have  presents  been 
showered  upon  Adelina  Patti,  that  the  jewels  which  she  has  been  presented  with 
from  time  to  time  are  said  to  be  of  the  enormous  value  of  ^100,000.  In  the 
year  1885,  when  she  appeared  in  New  York  as  Violetta,  the  diamonds  she  wore 
on  that  occasion  were  estimated  to  be  worth  ;^ 60,000.  One  of  the  handsomest 
lockets  in  her  possession  is  a  present  from  Her  Majesty,  Queen  Victoria,  and  a 
splendid  solitaire  ring  which  she  is  in  the  habit  of  wearing  was  given  to  her  by  the 
Baroness  Burdett-Coutts.  Of  no  less  than  twenty-three  valuable  bracelets,  one 
of  the  most  costly  is  that  presented  by  the  committee  of  the  Birmingham  festival. 
A  magnificent  comb,  set  with  twenty-three  large  diamonds,  is  the  gift  of  the 
Empress  Eugenie.  The  emperors  of  Germany,  Austria,  and  Russia  have  vied 
with  each  other  in  sending  her  jewels  of  the  rarest  value. 

When  singing  in  Italy,  King  Victor  Emmanuel  each  night  visited  the  opera 
for  the  purpose  of  hearing  her  ;  and  at  Florence,  where  the  enthusiastic  Italians 
applauded  to  the  very  echo,  Mario,  prince  of  Italian  tenors,  leaned  from  his  box 
to  crown  her  with  a  laurel  wreath.  A  similar  honor  was  bestowed  upon  her  by 
the  Duke  of  Alba  at  Madrid,  who  presented  her  with  a  laurel  crown.  At  the 
opera  house  in  that  city  numbers  of  bouquets  and  poems  were  to  be  seen  whirl- 
ing through  the  air  attached  to  the  necks  of  birds.  Queen  Isabella  of  Spain, 
gave  a  large  amethyst  brooch  surrounded  by  forty  enormous  pearls,  and  the 
Jockey  Club  of  Paris  presented  her  with  twelve  laurel  crowns.  The  citizens  of 
San  Francisco,  upon  the  occasion  of  her  last  visit,  presented  her  with  a  five- 
pointed  star  formed  of  thirty  large  brilliants,  and  from  the  Queen  of  Portugal 
she  received  a  massive  locket  containing  Her  Majesty's  portrait,  enriched  by  an 
enormous  oriental  pearl  encrusted  in  brilliants  ;  and  even  at  the  present  time 
1  scarcely  a  day  passes  without  the  "Diva"  receiving  some  acknowledgment  in 
recognition  of  her  transcendent  powers. 

Adelina  Patti's  first  husband  was  Henri,  Marquis  de  Caux,  an  equerry  to  the 
Empress  Eugcinie,  from  whom  she  was  separated  and  subsequently  divorced ; 
and,  on  June  10,  1886,  she  married  Ernesto  Nicolini,  the  famous  tenor  singer. 

In  appearance,  Patti  is  still  youthful,  and  really  seems  destined  to  rival  the 


382 


ARTISTS   AND    AUTHORS 


celebrated  French  beauty,  Ninon  de  I'Enclos,  who  was  so  beautiful  at  sixty  that 
the  grandsons  of  the  men  who  loved  her  in  her  3''outh  adored  her  with  equal 
ardor.  Patti's  figure  is  still  slim  and  rounded,  and  not  a  wrinkle  as  yet  is  to  be 
seen  on  her  cheeks,  or  a  line  about  her  eyes,  which  are  as  clear  and  bright  as  ever, 
and  which,  when  she  speaks  to  you,  look  you  straight  in  the  face  with  her  old 
winning  smile. 

During  her  career  Patti  has  earned  upward  of  half  a  million  sterling,  and  the 
enormous  sums  paid  to  her  at  the  present  time  more  than  double  the  amounts 
which  Jenny  Lind  received,  and  which  in  that  day  were  regarded  as  fabulous. 

On  a  natural  plateau,  surrounded  by  picturesque  vales,  and  situated  in  the 
heart  of  the  very  wildest  and  most  romantic  part  of  South  Wales,  between 
Brecon  and  Swansea,  and  at  the  base  of  the  Rock  of  the  Night,  stands  the  Cas- 
tle of  Craig-y-nos.  This  is  the  nightingale's  nest.  The  princely  fortune  which 
Patti  has  accumulated  has  enabled  her  so  to  beautify  and  enlarge  her  home,  that 
it  now  contains  all  the  luxuries  which  Science  and  Art  have  enabled  Fortune's  fa- 
vorites to  enjoy  ;  and  so  crowded  is  it  with  curios  and  valuables  that  it  may  best 
be  described  as  "  the  home  of  all  Art  yields  or  Nature  can  decree." 

Here,  in  picturesque  seclusion,  surrounded  by  a  unique  splendor  created  by 
her  own  exertions,  lives  this  gifted  and  beautiful  songstress.  She  is  the  "  Lady 
Bountiful "  of  the  entire  district,  extending  many  miles  around  the  castle,  over 
which  she  presides  with  such  hospitable  grace.  The  number  of  grateful  hearts 
she  has  won  in  the  Welsh  country  by  her  active  benevolence  is  almost  as  great 
as  is  the  legion  of  enthusiastic  admirers  she  has  enlisted  by  the  wonderful  beauty 
of  her  voice  and  the  series  of  artistic  triumphs,  which  have  been  absolutely  with- 
out parallel  during  the  present  century. 


SARAH    BERNHARDT 


By   H.   S.   Edwards 


(born   1844) 

LITTLE  girl,  as  Sarcey  relates,  once  presented  herself  at  the  Paris  Con- 
servatoire in  order  to  pass  the  examination  for  admission.  All  she 
knew  was  the  fable  of  the  "Two  Pigeons,"  but  she  had  no  sooner 
recited  the  lines — 

"  Deux  ]5igeons  s'ainiaient  d'amour  tendre, 
L'un  d'eux,  s'ennuyant  au  logis  " — 

than  Auber  stopped  her  with  a  gesture.  "  Enough,"  he  said.  "  Come  here,  my 
child."  The  little  girl,  who  was  pale  and  thin,  but  whose  eyes  gleamed  with  in- 
telligence, approached  him  with  an  air  of  assurance.  "  Your  name  is  Sarah  ?  " 
he  said. 


SAKAH    BERNHARDT    AS    CLEOPATRA 
GEORGES    CLAIRIN 


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SARAH    BERNHARDT 


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"  Yes,  sir,"  was  the  reply. 

"  You  are  a  Jewess  ?  " 

"  Yes,  sir,  by  birth  ;  but  I  have  been  baptized." 

"  She  has  been  baptized,"  said  Auber,  turning  to  his  colleagues.  "  It  would 
have  been  a  pity  if  such  a  pretty  child  had  not.  She  said  her  fable  of  the 
'Two  Pigeons  '  very  well.   She  must  be  admitted." 

Thus  Sarah  Bernhardt,  for  it  was  she,  entered 
the  Conservatoire.  She  was  a  Jewess  of  French 
and  Dutch  parentage,  and  was  born  at  Paris  in 
1844.  Her  father,  after  having  her  baptized,  had 
placed  her  in  a  convent ;  but  she  had  already 
secretly  determined  to  become  an  actress.  In  her 
course  of  study  at  the  Conservatoire  she  so  dis- 
tinguished herself  that  she  received  a  prize  which 
entitled  her  to  a  ddbut  at  the  Theatre  Francais. 
She  selected  the  part  of  Iphigdnie,  in  which  she 
appeared  on  August  11,  1862  ;  and  at  least  one 
newspaper  drew  special  attention  to  her  perform- 
ance, describing  her  as  "pretty  and  elegant,"  and 
particularly  praising  her  perfect  enunciation.  She  afterward  played  other  parts 
at  the  Thdatre  Fran9ais,  but  soon  transferred  herself  from  that  house  to  the 
Gymnase,  though  not  until  she  had  made  herself  notorious  by  having,  as  was  al- 
leged, slapped  the  face  of  a  sister-actress  in  a  fit  of  temper. 

The  director  of  the  Gymnase  did  not  take  too  serious  a  view  of  his  new  act- 
ress, who  turned  up  late  at  rehearsals,  and  sometimes  did  not  turn  up  at  all.  Nor 
did  her  acting  make  any  great  impression  at  the  Gvmnase,  where,  it  is  true,  she 
was  only  permitted  to  appear  on  Sundays.  At  this  theatre  she  lost  no  time 
in  exhibiting  that  independence  and  caprice  to  which,  as  much  as  to  her  talent, 
she  owes  her  celebrity.  The  day  after  the  first  representation  of  a  piece  by  La- 
biche,  "  Un  Mari  qui  Lance  sa  Femme,"  in  which  she  had  undertaken  an  im- 
portant part,  she  stealthily  quitted  Paris,  addressing  to  the  author  a  letter  in 
which  she  begged  him  to  forgive  her. 

After  a  tour  in  Spain,  Sarah  returned  to  Paris,  and  appeared  at  the  Odeon. 
Here  she  created  a  certain  number  of  characters,  in  such  plays  as  "  Les  Arrets," 
"  Le  Drame  de  la  Rue  de  la  Paix,"  and  "  Le  Batard,"  but  chiefly  distinguished 
herself  in  "  Ruy  Bias,"  and  in  a  translation  of  "  King  Lear."  Already  she  had 
riveted  the  attention  of  the  public  and  the  press,  who  saw  that  a  brilliant  future 
lay  before  her.  .•..■,;     ;    ■ 

At  the  end  of  1872  she  appeared  at  the  Comddie  Frangaise,  and  with'.gviqh.dj^ 
tinction  that  she  was  retained,  first  as  a  pensionnaire,  at  a  salary  of  six_  thousand 
francs,  and  afterward  as  a  socu'iaire.  Her  successes  were  rapid  and  ci;l>i>'j3Kig.;a£Td 
whether  she  appeared  in  modern  comedy,  in  classic  tragedy,  or  as  the  creator  o^ 
characters  in  entirely  new  plays,  the  theatre  was  always  crowded.  He?  m(jl(nH(>uS 
voice  and  pure  enunciation,  her  singularly  varied  accents,  her  pathos,"her  arUciit  • 


384  ARTISTS   AND   AUTHORS 

bursts  of  passion,  were  such  that  her  audience,  as  they  hung  upon  her  lips,  forgot  ' 
the  caprices  and  eccentricities  by  which  she  was  aheady  characterized  in  private 
life.  It  seemed,  however,  that  Sarah's  ambition  was  to  gain  personal  notoriety 
even  more  than  theatrical  fame  ;  and  by  her  performances  of  one  kind  or  another 
outside  the  theatre  make  herself  the  talk  of  society.  She  affected  to  paint,  to  chisel, 
and  to  write  ;  sent  ])ictures  to  the  Salon,  published  eccentric  books,  and  exhib- 
ited busts.  She  would  receive  her  friends  palette  in  hand,  and  in  the  dress  of  a 
male  artist.  She  had  a  luxurious  coffin  made  for  her,  covered  with  velvet,  in 
which  she  loved  to  recline  ;  and  she  more  than  once  went  up  in  a  balloon. 

Her  caprice,  whether  in  private  or  public,  was  altogether  unrestrained.  In  1 880 
Emile  Augier's  admirable  comedy,"  L'Aventuriere,"  was  revived  at  the  Comedie 
Francaise,  and  the  author  confided  the  part  of  Clorinde  to  Sarah  Bernhardt. 
After  the  first  representation,  however,  she  was  so  enraged  by  an  uncompliment- 
ary newspaper  criticism  that  she  sent  in  her  resignation  to  M.  Emile  Perrin,  di- 
rector of  the  theatre,  quitted  Paris,  and  went  to  England,  where  she  gave  a  series 
of  representations,  and,  appearing  there  for  the  first  time,  caused  a  veritable  sen- 
sation in  London  society.  Meanwhile,  M.  Perrin  instituted  against  her,  in  the 
name  of  the  Comedie  Francaise,  a  lawsuit  for  breach  of  contract,  with  damages 
laid  at  three  hundred  thousand  francs.  It  was  at  this  juncture  that  Sarah  ac- 
cepted the  offers  of  an  enterprising  manager  for  a  tour  in  j\merica,  where  she 
achieved  no  less  phenomenal  successes  than  in  Europe. 

A  sensational  account  of  this  American  tour  was  afterward  published  by  one 
of  her  associates,  Mile.  Marie  Colombier,  under  the  title  of  "  Sarah  Bernhardt 
en  Amerique."  This  was  followed  by  a  second  volume  from  the  same  pen,  en- 
titled "Sarah  Barnum."  The  latter  book,  as  its  title  suggests,  was  not  intended 
as  a  compliment ;  and  Sarah  Bernhardt  brought  an  action  against  the  writer,  by 
which  she  was  compelled  to  expunge  from  her  scandalous  volume  all  that  was 
offensive. 

The  rest  of  Sarah's  career  is  too  recent  to  be  traced  in  detail.  Nor  can  the 
life  of  an  acti'ess  of  our  own  time  be  dealt  with  so  freely  as  that  of  a  Sophie 
Arnould  or  an  Adrienne  Lecouvreur. 

From  America  Sarah  returned  to  Paris,  where  she  revived  all  her  old  successes, 
and  where,  in  1888,  at  the  Odeon,  she  produced  a  one-act  comedy  from  her  own 
pen,  entitled  "  L'Aveu,"  which  met  with  a  somewhat  frigid  reception.  She  has 
appeared  in  several  of  Shakespeare's  plays  with  great  success,  but  her  most  ambi- 
tious and  perhaps  most  admirable  productions  of  late  years  have  been  her  Cleo- 
patra, first  produced  in  Paris  in  1890,  and  her  Joan  of  Arc. 

Amotig..her  numerous  eccentricities,  Mile.  Bernhardt  once  got  married; 
London,  by;  i-eason  of  the  facilities  it  affords  for  this  species  of  recreation,  being 
chosen  as  the  scene  of  the  espousals.  The  hero  of  the  matrimonial  comedy, 
which  Vi'as  soon  followed  by  a  separation,  to  which,  after  many  adventures  on  the 
part  of  both  husband  and  wife,  a  reconciliation  succeeded,  was  M.  Damala,  a 
Crieck  genWeman,  possessed  of  considerable  histrionic  talent,  who  died  in  1889. 


This  book  is  due  two  weeks  from  the  last  date  stamped 
below,  and   if  not  returned  at  or  before  that    time    a   fine    of 
five  cents  a  day  will  be  incurred. 

"■''S* 

OCT  3  1  t94! 

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